Where does “touche-à-tout” come from?
touche-à-tout (French) comes from French touché, from French toucher, from German -ieren, from French -er, from English -er, from Middle English -er, from Old French -er, from Latin -āre — he, she.
touche-à-tout (French): jack of all trades
Definitions
- jack of all trades
Ancestry of “touche-à-tout”, step by step
touche-à-tout traces back through 3 separate lines of ancestry.
via French touché
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | French | touché | past participle of toucher |
| 2 | French | toucher | The act of touching; A way of touching; The sense... |
| 3 | German | -ieren | Verb suffix: it and its inflected forms are found... |
| 4 | French | -er | Forms infinitives of first-conjugation verbs |
| 5 | English | -er | A person or thing that does an action indicated... |
| 6 | Middle English | -er | agentive suffix; agent noun suffix |
| 7 | Old French | -er | Alternative form of -ier, verbal suffix;... |
| 8 | Latin | -āre | first conjugation |
| 9 | Proto-Italic | -āō | Forms primarily denominative verbs |
| 10 | Proto-Indo-European | -eh₂yéti | Creates iterative/ frequentative/ intensive... |
| 11 | Proto-Indo-European | -yéti | Creates intransitive, often deponent,... |
| 12 | Proto-Indo-European | yé- | — |
| 13 | Chichewa | iye | he, she |
via French à
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | French | à | to; on the, to; at |
| 2 | English | avie | emulously |
| 3 | French | envie | desire, lust, urge; appetite, craving; envy |
| 4 | Latin | invidia | envy, grudge, jealousy, prejudice, spite; an... |
| 5 | Latin | invidus | envious; hostile, inimical |
| 6 | Latin | invideo | I look askance or maliciously at, cast an evil... |
| 7 | Latin | īn- | un-, non-, not |
| 8 | Latin | în | in, at, on, upon, from (space) |
| 9 | Latin | en | lookǃ beholdǃ; reallyǃ?; come onǃ |
| 10 | Proto-Italic | en | in |
| 11 | Proto-Indo-European | h₁én | in |
via French tout
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | French | tout | whole, entirety, total; all; everything |
| 2 | Middle French | tout | all; all of; all; completely; totally; entirely |
| 3 | Old French | tôt | all |
| 4 | Vulgar Latin | tōttus | — |
| 5 | Latin | tōtus | whole, all, entire, total, complete, every part |
| 6 | Latin | tot | so many |
| 7 | Proto-Indo-European | toti | so many |
| 8 | Proto-Indo-European | só | this; that |