Chaise Lounge Or Longue

Chaise lounge seems to be stuck in an intermediate stage of development, with its very French first word and much more comfortable second word. It turns out that English speakers, in a rush to find a cozy place to set down a name for a newfangled sofa imported from France in the late 1700s, transformed the name chaise longue (French for "long chair") into chaise lounge. This kind of.

Chaise longue A chaise longue sofa An 18th-century rococo chaise longue A late 19th-century chaise longue 0:02 A chaise longue (/ ʃeɪz ˈlɒŋ, tʃeɪz -, - ˈlɒ̃ɡ /; [1] French: [ʃɛz lɔ̃ɡ], 'long chair') is an upholstered sofa in the shape of a chair that is long enough to support the legs of the sitter. In fact, "chaise lounge" is almost as well established in English as "chaise longue." The English spelling started showing up in dictionaries in the 1920s, just a decade or two after dictionaries started including the French term, which we used to hyphenate: chaise. First, let's let the Merriam Webster site get the chaise longue vs.

chaise lounge terminology out of the way-but please note that, generally, the English went with longue, while Americans leaned on lounge. Second, the chaise longue was not an invention of the Gilded Age, but was around long before the Breakers was built in 1893. In current American use chaise lounge is most often used for poolside, patio, or deck furniture, while chaise longue and the shortened chaise are somewhat more often used for indoor furniture.

To insist that chaise longue is the only correct form because of its etymology is an example of the etymological fallacy. Chaise longue comes from French, where chaise means chair and longue means long, thus a long chair. Chaise lounge is a variation that has developed in American English due to the pronunciation of longue as lounge.

The misspelling 'chaise lounge' is the object of much derision outside the USA. 'Chaise lounge', which is properly spelled 'chaise longue', began life as such a linguistic mistake and has survived because it does make intuitive sense. Lounge chairs surround the pool at Ojai Rancho Inn on May 5, 2022, at Ojai.

The chaise longue, a pair of French words, is as common as "chaise lounge" but preferred by dictionaries and editors. Many speakers, however, confuse French chaise with English "chase" and French longue with English "lounge" (understandable since the article in question is a sort of couch or lounge), resulting in the mispronunciation "chase lounge." We may imagine the French as chasing each other around their lounges, but a chaise is just a chair. A chaise lounge is a long, low couch for reclining, which has a back and only one armrest.

Chaise lounge is the Americanized version of chaise longue, which continues to be the accepted spelling in British English.