C is for Coup and Cul
Some foreign words are absorbed and become 'englishified' but sometimes we just use words or phrases exactly as the origin country does. We have stolen a lot of vocabulary from Europe, even the French. C is for coup d'état and cul-de-sac. I love them because they are like metaphors, describing the thing in terms of similarity to something else. I remember learning the phrase cul-de-sac as a child from a street sign and loving the idea that it was like the bottom-of-the-bag.
I had never considered the literal translation of cul-de-sac!
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