ménage

See also: menage, Menage, and ménagé

English

Alternative forms

• menage
• menâge (obsolete)

Etymology

Borrowed from French ménage; compare Middle English menage, a parallel borrowing from an earlier form of the French word.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /mɛˈnɑːʒ/, /meɪˈnɑːʒ/
• Rhymes: -ɑːʒ

Noun

ménage (plural ménages)

2. A household; a domestic situation. [from 17th c.]
   • 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 167:

     "Oh," cried her ladyship, "I see the whole ménage; they will take a first floor over a baker's shop, to save fire, and live upon red herrings during the week, with a mutton chop by way of meat on a Sunday."

   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin, published 2011, page 39:

     It smelled of ether and something else, possibly laudanum. I had never tried the mixture but it seemed to go pretty well with the Geiger ménage.

4. (now Scotland) A type of cooperative society whereby all members pay a regular sum of savings, or through which goods can be paid for in installments. [from 19th c.]

   Hypernym: ROSCA

6. A group of people in a sexual relationship; especially, such a group that live together; the relationship itself. [from 20th c.]

   Hyponyms: ménage à trois, ménage à quatre, ménage à moi

Anagrams

• Meegan, manege, manège

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French mesnage, from Old French manage, mainage, from manoir, maneir, maindre, from Latin manēre. The Old French forms maisnage, mesnage were influenced by the word maisnée, maisnede, from Vulgar Latin *mā(n)siōnāta (French maisonnée), from Latin mānsiō (which also became French maison).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /me.naʒ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʒ

Noun

ménage m (plural ménages)

1. housework, housekeeping
2. household

   les ménages les moins aisés

   the least well-off households

Derived terms

• déménager
• emménager
• faire bon ménage
• faire le ménage
• femme de ménage
• ménage à moi
• ménage à quatre
• ménage à trois
• ménage de printemps
• ménager
• scène de ménage

 

Descendants

• → Danish: menage
• → English: ménage
• → German: Menage
• → Portuguese: ménage

Further reading

• “ménage”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• engame, engamé, magnée, manège, mangée, Mégane

Portuguese

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French ménage.

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /meˈna.ʒi/

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /meˈna.ʒi/
  • (Southern Brazil) IPA^(key): /meˈna.ʒe/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /mɛˈna.ʒɨ/

Noun

ménage m or f (plural ménages)

1. domestic life
2. household (everyone who lives in a given house)
3. Clipping of ménage à trois.