Le groupe français 2016 - 2019 Les Voyageurs

[DaveAgain]

voir dire - questioning
- My dictionary mentions that 'voir' used to have a meaning of 'true'.

From Latin vērus, which is the root of words like "verify", "veracious" and "verdict". The latter comes from Medieval Latin veredictum (through the intermediate Anglo-Norman/French verdit, Modern English spelling is influenced by Latin), ultimately containing the exact same roots as the expression in question (voir dire). Another familiar descendant of the Latin vērus is the modifier "very".

The homonymic French verb voir, of course, comes from a different Latin word vidēre.

Larousse.fr spell that with a trailing 'e', voire. Would that perhaps be a later spelling change to differentiate the two?

[Dragon27]

Larousse.fr spell that with a trailing 'e', voire. Would that perhaps be a later spelling change to differentiate the two?

Well, it's hard to say, orthography in those times wasn't as standardized, I believe, as it is now, although it may not necessarily concern this word (and its spellings). In Middle English it was pretty common to see the same word being spelled a gazillion of ways (even by the same author in the same sentence), and the final "e" (which has become silent early) could easily appear or disappear into thin air. In Old French, however, it may not have been the case, since the final "e" became silent much later in the game (closer to Modern French). So, although, the modern spelling may have been partially influenced by the need to preserve the difference, overall, I believe, it is etymological.

Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Français jusqu'au milieu du XIV siècle by A. J. Greimas provides different spellings that meant different things in Old French, so there was an adjective voir (masculine, feminine form is voire), masculine noun voir (and a feminine noun voire, too) and the adverbs voir and voire which may have meant different things (or used differently; they were certainly pronounced differently). So the modern spelling voire is not a later spelling change, but a preservation of one of the original spellings. "Voir" could also have been spelled as "veir", among other variants. There were also some other homographs, e.g. a masculine noun voire (or verre) meaning "glass", and a masculine noun voir (or ver) meaning "spring" (printemps).

[Le Baron]

Larousse.fr spell that with a trailing 'e', voire. Would that perhaps be a later spelling change to differentiate the two?

That's more to mean 'indeed'.

[Iversen]

As far as I know "voire" nowadays can only mean something like "c'est-à-dire" - and always with the final e. According to my etymological dictionary (Larousse 1971) it comes from Latin "verus" (true) rather than "vedere" > "voir"(to see). It's probably not used much in ordinary speech, but I have a 'foible' for those 'mots rares et précieux', and I could definitely see myself using it - just for fun.

[Le Baron]

As far as I know "voire" nowadays can only mean something like "c'est-à-dire"

This is why I added 'indeed' or perhaps même is better as a synonym. However I think it generally has a sense of negation, so could be in some contexts: 'if not/if not even' and 'that's not to say/not to mention'. So sans parler de more than just c'est-à-dire. And it's fairly stretched by that point.

[DaveAgain]

New-to-me expression: par la bande > indirectly.

(Bande as used in this expressoin was originally the cushion of a billard table.)

... parce qu'elle a écrit des romans et surtout des autobiographies mais toujours en arrivant par la bande c'est à dire que elle racontait pas sa vie de a à z en allant directement au coeur du sujet mais elle avait l'habitude de prendre toujours des sujets qui pouvait paraître comme ça anodin ou marginaux mais qui en fait en disait long sur sa vie et qui nous permet comme ça en filigrane de voir des secrets à paraître un peu comme si elle nous faisait des confidences

https://youtu.be/n2PV6CTs69g?t=42

[MorkTheFiddle]

Perhaps an English equivalent is the basketball expression, "off the glass"?