cul-de-sac

Berkeley, Tuesday, October 27, 2026

This post might be continuous, so not a dead end, but it is to record some very American and UK English words, I might find in some sources.

cul-de-sac: a dead end. Read in McPhee’s Los Angeles Against the Mountains.

répondez s’il vous plaît: RSVP. Very common as a request in day-to-day exchanges, particularly written, and even more commonly in current times with a form, to confirm one’s attendance.

cliché: This might have entered my lexicon from McPhee as well.

quiche: Sarah made it for a great potluck around September 2018 at Lake Anza. I organized it but ran out of time to bring food. At that time I lived in a dorm. I did not have an easily accessible kitchen, but still I should have been more aware. I might have brought a few things, but not really like for a potluck picnic meal. The quiche was great, by the way. What a lesson learned.

noir: Noir is commonly found in food in my experience. All of those words come from experience, and a few checking and editing when needed. I am starting to adapt to the latter. I am doing it for the first time ever on this post. But I won’t remove the ground learnings. Noir means black. In my ground experiences I find it in a type of wine, Pinot Noir. I also find it in the blood sausage, boudin noir. In conversations, it has shown up in film descriptions. It seems that noir is a classic film category.