I love house-buying shows. Mostly they look at homes in Spain or Portugual. But today they were looking in France. Just when you thought estate-agent-speak couldn’t get worse than bijou, cosy (=cramped), and the like, I learnt a new word: gîte. After about three minutes, and hearing it several times, the word had already begun to irk me. After an hour, I was ready to start stabbing.
So far as I can tell, the word means a small cottage or annex, self-catering. The Oxford English wordbook defines it as:
A stopping-place, lodging … a furnished or self-catering holiday home, usu. in a rural district.
Call me a “luddite” if you will, but what is wrong with (French-style) self-board holiday home/cot(e)? Or if that’s too overly specific, what about hire holiday home?
I think gîte, even without its little letter-hat (gite), is needless, pretentious, dreck.
© 2017 Bryan A. J. Parry
featured image from http://www.hotel-r.net/im/hotel/fr/gîte-61.jpg
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