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Lounging Around Palm Beach
The white-cushioned chaise lounges on the Brazilian Court hotel patios pose a serious threat to productivity.
They are so inviting, with their thoughtful little canopied tops, that I for one nearly bailed on a lunch meeting yesterday at the hotel’s Café Boulud to do a little lounging.
Nearly.
When I got back to the office, I found this — from my friends at A Phrase A Week — taunting me in my inbox:
Chaise lounge
Meaning: A form of sofa with a backrest at one end only.
Origin: … ‘Chaise lounge’, also sometimes spelled ‘chase lounge’, began life as such a linguistic mistake and has survived because it does make intuitive sense. The piece of furniture in question is properly called a ‘chaise longue’. The name is of French origin, of course, and has been known there since the 18th century, translating into English simply as ‘long chair’ — which is just what it is. The understandability of the misspelling of ‘longue’ as ‘lounge’ is that lounging is what one does on these sofas and the supposed translation of ‘lounging chair’ makes perfect sense.
I’m no psychic, but I think there is a chaise lounge in my future this weekend. Hope you find time to lounge around a little yourselves.
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