To find the use of the word ‘fiancé’ irritating?

That’s wrong, I think.

Collins gives for schadenfraude, “delight in another's misfortune“

And for gloat, “If someone is gloating, they are showing pleasure at their own success or at other people's failure in an arrogant and unpleasant way.”

It seems pretty obvious that the latter includes the former.

We are discussing the use of the word fiancé and that some PPs find it cringe worthy and pretentious.

I have never heard the term ‘wanky’ and it made me cringe.

It's ok if you don't appreciate nuance, and you should use the simpler terminology if it makes you more comfortable.

Objecting to the concept of having a specific word for an engaged person is simply bizarre. Language routinely has convenient words for specific circumstances, you can also ditch widow and orphan if you're going to pretend fiance is an issue.

Those who discuss their circumstances get to decide how to discuss them, it's not your place to make that decision for them. If I say "I'm a widow, or "I'm an orphan" you know precisely what I mean, and I am in charge of that definition.

That's what language is for. We're not going to degrade communication to the level of Newspeak just because standard, normal terms offend you.

When discussing me, if not in my presence, you can pretend husband has no meaning and say "Man she lives with" if it comforts you.

If in my presence I will gently correct you and say "Oh do you mean my husband" - because you sound insane.

Treating fiance as somehow objectionable is making a completely ordinary piece of vocabulary into an issue when there is no issue except one you have invented.

I don't know why you feel inferior about not being engaged or having a fiance, but that's on you. And if you're going to claim you don't, in fact, feel inferior then you need to drop this nonsense, right now. Because there is simply no other plausible reason for objecting to a perfectly normal noun that is in common usage.

In fact, if you're going to pretend fiance is a problem then I absolutely insist that you must say "man I sometimes fuck and date" or "man I started living with and have sex with" instead of partner or boyfriend.

After all, it's accurate and you don't need a special term to describe anything, or anyone.

Why do you think people are using a word of foreign origin to create an impression of intellectual superiority? Maybe they are just using a perfectly normal word which has become part of English?

That’s wrong, I think.

Collins gives for schadenfraude, “delight in another's misfortune“

And for gloat, “If someone is gloating, they are showing pleasure at their own success or at other people's failure in an arrogant and unpleasant way.”

It seems pretty obvious that the latter includes the former.

Well nobody proposed or gave anyone a ring, nor did we tell people we decided to get married, which are the things that generally have to happen in order for everyone else to consider you "engaged" in the cultural sense, rather than simply two people engaged to be married.

They might be. They’re not relevant though. Any more than a language learner who moves from one language to her native language out of necessity is relevant.

It certainly does. Schadenfreude is a passive, internal feeling of malicious joy derived from witnessing another's misfortune, whereas gloating is far more active and often boastful and may be related to an action such as winning against a rival.

How wonderful it is that we have so many words we can choose from, including those from other languages, which offer so much nuance.

I have to say that using it to describe someone you’ve been seeing for a few weeks is a purely Mn thing for me. I’ve never encountered it in RL.

@TatianasCabbagePie Today 13:01

I dislike "partner".

I call my husband my husband now. He was my fiancé between us making the decision to marry until our marriage ceremony and my boyfriend before that.

I hate 'partner' too. Makes it sound like you are in business together, and not in a relationship. (To me anyway...)

With DH and I, firstly he was my boyfriend (we were early-mid 20s,) then when we got engaged he was my fiancé, then when we got married, he was husband obvs!

We were engaged for 2 years before we got married. I wasn't calling him my boyfriend when we were engaged to be married, why would I? He was my fiancé, so I called him that!

I certainly wasn’t calling him my 'partner' ...... ever! Yuk! 😖

@TatianasCabbagePie Today 13:01

I dislike "partner".

I call my husband my husband now. He was my fiancé between us making the decision to marry until our marriage ceremony and my boyfriend before that.

I hate 'partner' too. Makes it sound like you are in business together, and not in a relationship. (To me anyway...)

With DH and I, firstly he was my boyfriend (we were early-mid 20s,) then when we got engaged he was my fiancé, then when we got married, he was husband obvs!

We were engaged for 2 years before we got married. I wasn't calling him my boyfriend when we were engaged to be married, why would I? He was my fiancé, so I called him that!

I certainly wasn’t calling him my 'partner' ...... ever! Yuk! 😖

A fiancé is a boyfriend/partner though!

He is a boyfriend she is going to marry. No one else needs to know that they have promised to marry each other.
It's different from husband/wife because those terms have legal status.

I don’t disagree, generally. We shouldn’t descend into the Académie Française nonsense about language purity. English is glorious for its willingness to adopt foreign words and phrases. It’s all a matter of context and circumstance though.

(‘Schadenfraude’ does not convey anything that ‘gloat’ doesn’t.)

I was responding to a PP who said she didn't know how not to just refer to her husband as her husband at work without introducing him

Eh? I'm not grasping your point here.

Being engaged/married is nothing like a job situation, for most undertaking it they hope it will be a lifelong relationship. People take it seriously because it's important to them emotionally. Being engaged is, for some people, a stage on the road from casual to serious to engaged to married.

These days people are free to skip/shorten/change any part of the processes relating to marriage, and that's great. But they don't have a right to denigrate the process that other people feel is important for them. It isn't 'cringeworthy', it's just not something you understand or want yourself. Live and let live works best if you respect other people's views as equally valid.

Fair, its obviously not a majority opinion! I can see why you think its weird.

But if you think it through, why is being allergic to “fiancé” weirder than the mania people have on here about the words “holibobs” and “hubs”.

I have lost count of the threads I have read on here about how much people hate these names: it’s beyond cliché. Its an irrational dislike, as is my dislike of the word “fiancé”. It’s subconscious and not something anyone could justify properly.

But everyone has their bugbears. I have several and this isn’t even the worst of mine but surely it shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to understand that some words just irrationally annoy people.

Excuse me, but you say “wanky”!

There are some concepts that don’t exist as a single word in English where using foreign terms accurately captures something that would be far more laborious to explain in English, e.g. schadenfreude, to provide an example most people will know. There are many more.

Interestingly, it is thought that this is one of the reasons that speaking more than one language fluently as a child has been shown to raise IQ on average: it provides more clearly defined concepts in language for the brain to build connections between because different languages contain concepts that aren’t directly translatable clearly (although obviously that’s not the case with “fiancé”).

European languages share common heritage and have always influenced each other/ borrowed words from each other so although “fiancé” is of French origin it is now considered to be part of the English language itself. It’s not an unusual word that any English-only speaking person would not understand. And to be honest I don’t understand this weird attitude to people speaking foreign languages anyway and that it is somehow “pretentious”, especially when it comes to words for something invented in the other country being pronounced properly rather than with English phonetics imposed on them (espresso, chorizo, croissant etc!).

I just don’t think a word denoting that you are planning to get married but have not yet done so is necessary.

Its like having a specific word for a person who has found a job but hasn’t yet started it. Its just too much information. Its “look at me, I’m nearly married, don’t you know!” No one cares.

Don’t get me wrong I am not proposing to ban it, live and let live, I just find it cringeworthy.