tutoyer

Borrowed from French tutoyer.

This entry needs an audio pronunciation. If you are a native speaker with a microphone, please record this word. The recorded pronunciation will appear here when it's ready.

tutoyer (third-person singular simple present tutoyers, present participle tutoyering, simple past and past participle tutoyered)

1. (transitive) To address (someone) in French using the familiar second-person pronoun tu; to thou.
   • 1862, The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, volume 115, page 132:

     As I had begged Goethe to tutoyer me, he sent me a message to say, I must really remain more than the two days I had named, otherwise he should never get into the way of doing so.

   • 1866, William Stamer, Recollections of a Life of Adventure, volume 1, page 83:

     […] Corporal Cornichon, walking straight up to the bar, "tutoyering" me all the time in the most horridly familiar manner, clapped me on the back, and asked me to take a glass of cognac with him.

• tutoy

• vousvoyer, vouvoy

• T-V distinction
• thou ~ you

From tu + -oyer with euphonic t; compare the Icelandic þúa, German duzen and English thou. Cognate with Portuguese tutear, Spanish tutear and Romanian tutui.

• IPA^(key): /ty.twa.je/

• Audio:

  (file)

tutoyer

1. (transitive) to thou (to address (someone) using the informal second-person pronoun tu rather than the formal vous)

   Antonym: vouvoyer

2. (colloquial) to be familiar with, to be close to something

   Tutoyer la mort. ― To be no stranger to death

   • 2024 (14 April), Yves Boisvert, "J'ai marié un espion", La Presse:

     Le centre-ville restauré de Bozeman a gardé son charme western rustique, tout en accueillant une nouvelle cohorte de hipsters, amateurs de plein air, de vélo de montagne et de kombucha. Ils sont venus tutoyer l’ours et le pygargue à tête blanche dans les sentiers de montagne et ne sont jamais repartis.

     Downtown Bozeman has kept its rustic western charm all while welcoming a new cohort of hipsters, fans of the outdoors, mountain bikes, and kombucha. They came to get up close and personal with the bear and the bald eagle on mountain trails and never left.

This verb is part of a large group of -er verbs that conjugate like noyer or ennuyer. These verbs always replace the 'y' with an 'i' before a silent 'e'.

• tutoiement

• → Catalan: tutejar (calque)
• → English: tutoyer

• T-V distinction

• “tutoyer”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.