- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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SMART TALK SMART TALK by Dr. Perse Nickety
RESTAURANTEUR: Staff at the Center for English as a First Language like to eat out now and then. However, we stopped patronizing Eat Here, Diet Home in downtown Underbelly, here in Texas, once we heard Chef Tomayne call himself a restauranteur. The word has no N in it, in spelling or pronunciation.
The word restaurant originally meant a place where you get restored, since you arrived tired, hungry, and thirsty. That made the proprietor a restorer, or, to mangle the English into something more like the original French, a restorator. Restaurateur is exactly that, and happens to be the word we use today. If English is our first language, that is.
Remember that seafood chain's embarrassing commercial for "N-less shrimp?" Restaurateur actually is N-less. You may need to practice that. You'll sound much smarter.
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