Vocabulary Lesson

If nothing else good can be said about the crises of our time, they at least give us new vocabulary words. For example, today it was reported that the infamous $700 billion for the Wall Street Bailout will not be presented all at once to the Bailout Czar. Instead, it will come in tranches. Barney Frank felt confidence in saying that not because it is true, although it may be, but because this past week we have, if we have been paying attention to national news of high finance, learned all about tranches: it is our new vocabulary word. Last month, no one speaking to the public could have said that something was coming out in tranches. We would have all stared rudely at him/her, stunned and puzzled and wondering just what kind of elitist he/she was.

I made a loaf of bread today, and we are eating it in tranches. Our bacon, too, is being laid upon our breakfast plates in tranches. It is even possible that yesterday, I tranched myself with a knife, but not seriously. I say tranche all the time, nowadays.

Tranche we have previously known in English in other forms: trench, trencher (and trencherman), as well as trenchant and retrench and even trench coat. Tranche is a very old French word (maybe from Latin, truncare, from whence comes truncate and maybe tree trunk, too). Truncare means to cut. Tranche means, to slice. A slice into the earth is a trench. A second earth slice and you have decided to retrench. If you slice off a slab of wood to put your cooked meat on, it is a trencher. If you eat a lot off that trencher, you are a trencherman. If it rains a lot when you are in a trench, you need a trench coat. If you make a remark that cuts to the heart of the matter, the remark is trenchant.

Thus it is that when the investment banks ‘slice and dice’ the mortgages into little pieces and then sell them in tranches, they have tranched them by slicing them, and then have put them back together hugger-mugger into new bundles which are then sliced again not into slices but into slabs called tranches. And, according to Barney Frank, when the federal government puts out our tax dollars to buy the tranches, it will put the money out in tranches. It could be a new slogan for the end times we seem to be in: Tranches for Tranches!

It scarcely makes sense, of course, but I think that’s the point.

Notes for the Curious:

tranche Noun, feminine (a) slice of meat, cake, bread, rasher of bacon; edge of a coin, book; section, tax band, bracket, credit instalment, time slot; ~ de boeuf beefsteak; couper en ~s to slice

trench
c.1386, "track cut through a wood," later "long, narrow ditch" (1489), from O.Fr. trenche "a slice, ditch" (1288), from trenchier "to cut," possibly from V.L. *trincare, from L. truncare "to cut or lop off" (see truncate). Trenches for military protection are first so called c.1500. Trench warfare first attested 1918. Trench-coat first recorded 1916, a type of coat worn by British officers in the trenches.
trencher Look up trencher at Dictionary.com
c.1308, "wooden platter on which to cut meat," from Anglo-Fr. trenchour, from O.N.Fr. trencheor "a trencher," lit. "a cutting place," from O.Fr. trenchier "to cut" (see trench).
trenchant Look up trenchant at Dictionary.com
c.1330, "cutting, sharp," from O.Fr. trenchant "cutting, sharp," prp. of trenchier "to cut" (see trench). Figurative sense is recorded from 1603.
entrench Look up entrench at Dictionary.com
c.1563, from en- "make, put in" + trench.
retrench Look up retrench at Dictionary.com
1598, "dig a new trench as a second line of defense," from Fr. retrencher "to cut off," from re- "back" + O.Fr. trenchier "to cut." Sense of "cut down, reduce (expenses, etc.)" is from 1625.