Words stolen from French

Espirit de la ´escalier \ess-preed-less-kah-lyay\

We’ve all been in a situation when we think of the perfect thing to say in response to something provocative or insulting, too late to say it at the moment. When the right words come, the right time is past. The French call this too-late inspiration l’esprit de l’escalierplay. Esprit is the root of our word spirit, but in French, it can also mean “wit,” so this phrase is translated literally as “wit of the staircase” and is used to mean repartee thought of too late, on the way home.

The expression was coined by Denis Diderot, the French philosopher of the 1700s, so we can imagine that the grand staircase of a château or manor is what he had in mind.

Outre \oo-TRAY\

When words are borrowed from other languages, the idea the word expresses somehow goes beyond the limits of the language that adopted the new word. In the case of outréplay, that’s also a clue as to the borrowed word’s meaning. Outré means “violating convention or propriety” or “bizarre.” It is used to describe things that are unusual, extravagant, or shocking in some way:

Because of this, there’s always been a sense of him being too outré for traditional outlets: too direct, too bumptious, too partial, too much.

— Miranda Sawyer, The Observer (London, Eng.), 23 Apr. 2022.

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See more stolen French words from here: c.f. Merriam-webster