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

[Sparklesbigtoe]

Do people still use the word fiancé to describe the person they’re engaged to on a regular basis (eg. every time they mention them to someone who doesn’t know their name they’ll say fiancé rather than partner or bf/gf)? Or is this becoming kind of outdated? There’s a woman at work who keeps saying ‘my fiancé and I this, my fiancé and I that, yesterday I said to my fiancé blah, blah’. It’s really starting to grate on me because she could easily say his name then start referring to him by it, just like everyone else does. It also struck me that other people I know who’ve been engaged recently carried on saying ‘partner’, or they might say fiancé once or twice but generally they use partner. I’m sure I’m BU to find it annoying but it feels like they’re trying to boast that someone’s asked them to marry them everytime I hear it!

@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! 😖

I like the term partner, myself. It nicely encapsulates a romantic relationship where you're serious enough to live together, but not (yet) planning to make any legal commitments beyond cohabitation.

My husband went through boyfriend, partner, fiancé, and then husband - and became the father of my child in the middle there (but I didn't introduce him that way)!

And partner is so very, very vague. It means everything from guy I've been dating for a couple of weeks to man I live with and have had five children with, and everything in between. I suppose some people like that vaguery, and they can use that deliberately vague word.

And for the majority of us - we can just use the correct words, for ease and clarity.

Teenagers use partner all the time, which elicits an inner eye roll from me.

I've been with my boyfriend for 9 years, but because we don't share finances or a front door I purposely don't call him my partner.

Fiancé/fiancée is factually accurate, @Sparklesbigtoe, and being engaged is different to being a boyfriend/girlfriend.

But if you don’t like the term or its usage, that is entirely up to you.

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.

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?

How on earth did you decide to get married if neither of you said ‘shall we get married?’ Or similar? That’s a proposal. I thin’ people have got hooked up on the best big showy proposals and parties, but they’re just add ons. How did you not tell anyone you were getting married? You need to have told at least 2 in order to have witnesses at the ceremony, surely? Again, doesn't have to be a big showy party or massive invitations.

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

Do you think calling musical statues ‘tableaux vivants’ is normal?

Do you think a someone describing a successful child as a ‘wunderkind’ is normal?

I mean in Bristol, not Paris or Berlin.

It is not about objecting to the existence of the word as such.

It is about language pragmatics - choosing which information you communicate in each conversation.
Using the word fiance is choosing to communicate a specific relationship status - which is absolutely irrelevant to the listener in many cases.

The society is moving away from automatically sharing one's legal relationship status in everyday interaction, with the Ms title being around for decades. It is only logical, that ways of talking about the significant others are evolving as well.

At this moment "partner" seems to be the leading way to express the concept of "stable relationship" without specifying details, even though some people don't like that word at all business connotation) and some would use it only for non-husband.

Ha! If you want to pretend you’re more knowledgeable and sophisticated than the rest just say so. No need to get all passive aggressive about it.

Good for you.

Not quite so snipey once you have to explain it, is it? Rather loses its bite.

@Hoodle that is correct but schadenfreude is a quiet inner feeling rather than an outward expression.

There is nothing that can be seen to be ‘arrogant and unpleasant’ about that inner sense of schadenfreude.

For me in NZ, 'wunderkind' wouldn't take me by surprise, but 'tableaux vivants' would intrigue me as I didn't recognise the term, so I'd want to know more.

Having Googled it, I recalled I've seen it on Modern Family, of all things, and it's got nothing to do with musical statues. So the person was using it incorrectly.

That was my intention.

Schadenfreude isn’t an equivalent of gloat at all. Gloating implies being deeply pleased that something unpleasant has happened to someone and also maybe expressing that. Schadenfreude can just be happiness it wasn’t you. Doesn’t necessarily mean you are glad it’s someone else. For example if you are watching blooper reels you could experience schadenfreude because you enjoy a laugh at the expense of the famous actors. That’s not the same as gloating.

People can gloat quietly and unboastfully. People can express Schadenfreude openly and unpleasantly.

It’s all about the context.

“I had a sense of Schadenfreude when my boss got fired” is no different to “I gloated when my boss got fired”.

I’d say that ‘gloat’ is the more adaptable and useful word.

You can experience schadenfreude without expressing it and without being arrogant. It’s an important distinction. So while gloating probably does include a feeling of schadenfreude, schadenfreude doesn’t always include gloating. Useful differentiation.

I never said it, i said partner and then husband once married. I felt like saying fiancé was showing off i was engaged!

No, it doesn’t.

😆

It’s not usual, certainly. And it could mean pretentiousness/arrogance. But there are lots of words which are used perfectly normally I. English, such as fiancé, which are perfectly usual.

I think you’re being painfully literal and missing the point. The mother using it was trying to show off her ‘admirable’ vocabulary. Whether she used it strictly correctly or not isn’t the point.

Why on earth is ‘wunderkind’ common in NZ?

Agree. It's very teenage.