The First Cut

Once again, I'm doing the dishes and idly reading the various boxes of things on the shelf above the sink, and I notice that the French words for "cutting edge"--on a box of cling-wrap, not a box of modern art or computer components--are "bord tranchant".

"Bord" is pretty obviously related to "border". No further explanation needed there, I trust. And doesn't "tranchant" look like an English word?

The suffix "-ant" in French has exactly the same effect as "-ing" has in English: it turns a verb into an adjective. "Tell", for instance, becomes the adjective "telling" (as well as the progressive verb as in present-progressive "he's telling a story"); "dire", "to say", becomes, with a consonant change, "disant", "saying", as in the naturalized English expression "soi-disant", "self-styled" (literally "saying [of] oneself").

"Trancher" is a French verb meaning "to cut" or "to slice"; "tranche" is a noun meaning "a slice". We have a few English offspring from this: "trench", a channel or ditch that's cut out of the earth, and "trencher", a plank of wood upon which meat is carved, and "trencherman", a hearty eater, as manual labourers such as ditch-diggers are known to be.

And, of course, we have "trenchant", a direct descendant of "tranchant"; a trenchant remark is one that is strong, sharp, and, above all, cutting.