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 Or is this becoming kind of outdated?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!

Yes, and some aren’t.

Of course it would be silly to object to someone using ‘beef’ or ‘jacket’. But it’s perfectly reasonable to roll your eyes at an English person saying “we had a tête-à-tête”.

(I find ‘schadenfreude’ pretentious. It just means to gloat.)

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.

Surely it works in the same way as a wedding ring does after marriage, though? If you're somebody's boyfriend or girlfriend, that signifies to anybody who might fancy one (or both!) of you that there's every chance that you might be available and looking to date before long, if they hang around discreetly in the hope of an eventual opportunity. Some may even not actually wait until you split up and strike pre-emptively to see if you may be more interested in them than your current GF/BF.

However, once you're engaged, and referring to your fiancé(e), that sends the very clear message that you've seriously made your choice and are now out of the dating pool - hopefully for life.

I get you OP - I actually didn't get engaged before we married because the thought of having to refer to my fioooooonnnsssay really annoyed me.

I've seen posters on MN describe a BF/GF of a fortnight as a partner. Fiancé/Fiancée describes a serious relationship without asking further questions. It's more weird that you find it odd.

Most of those are a bit de trop, though; and I consider anybody who uses them as somewhat infra dig.

@Hoodle “But people who drop foreign terms into English to show off to try to create an air of intellectual superiority are just laughable posers.”

Alternatively they may be English and French speakers who enjoy the interchange of language.

I agree i find it irritating too. It's unnecessary
Why not just refer to him by his name? Or if they don't know his name just say my boyfriend /partner (fiance if they really have to!) John and then call him John whenever talking about him.

Hate to tell you this but you actually did get engaged. You can’t get married without being engaged. The moment you agree you’re definitely going to get married (and subsequently start making plans to do so, even if only in your track suit at the registry office with a KFC afterwards), you’re engaged.

I had an ex who would get really annoyed if I said "al dente" because that was a 'yuppie word'. I'm not sure if he thought I'd made it up.

It's not the reason he was an ex, but on reflection probably should have been.

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.

I don't like it either and I have been married for a very long time. I'm not jealous it's just very annoying!

English is such a wonderfully magpie language – it thieves anything shiny! I love the use of loanwords.

Its definitely a me problem, I haven’t claimed otherwise. As I say, I am perfectly happy for people to use the word if it suits them. As is their right.

Its my right to find it twee and cringeworthy. And I do.

You are asking if people refer to the thing they want to talk about by using the name of the thing they want to talk about?

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.

When I was first married I had to use ‘my husband’ in almost every sentence. I must have annoyed so many people but fortunately the novelty soon wore off

Mumsnet really brings out the strangest people, what an absolutely bizarre fixation. Harmless, but very, very weird.

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 started a new job and worry it's annoying to refer to "my husband" in conversation, but given they don't know who Derek is, I don't know what else to really say. You can't formally announce their name, can you?

She's right though, you were engaged to be married. Engaged just means you've agreed to get married and you are engaged to be married during the period after you have discussed and agreed upon the desire to marry and before you get married.

Or, as you would prefer, before you say some words in front of someone official and agree in front of others to live with a man you have sex with and may or may not have children with and plan to stay with forever.

This is the odd thing to me. The only time I might refer to my husband as that, is with people who don't know him or of him. So if I drop the car at the garage and they say pick it up at 5, I might say my husband will be picking it up, I'll be at work. Similarly a utility company recently caused some damage to our property and when they were trying to arrange a time to fix it they said are you available Tuesday and I said I'm not but my husband will be at home so that's fine. At work, with friends etc I just use his name. Eg what are you up to this weekend? Not much got some bits to do around the house, kids party Sunday and Barry is working Saturday so it's just me and Barry junior, we might walk to the beach.

I think you might be overthinking it a bit 😂 If she’s engaged, fiancé is the correct word, and she probably just uses it naturally. I wouldn’t read it as showing off unless there’s something else going on.

Yes and in the UK don’t you have to give notice, legally, so you were officially engaged for at least as long as that.

Ha! A “yuppie word”, used in every Italian family in rural/ poor villages. Perfect example of the inverted snobbery people are referring to and even funnier because he was so wrong about a basic cooking instruction of a basic food staple being somehow pretentious. You must have had a good giggle at that one.