vouvoy

Verb

vouvoy (third-person singular simple present vouvoys, present participle vouvoying, simple past and past participle vouvoyed)

1. (rare) To address (someone) in French using the formal second-person pronoun vous.
   • Americans are practically on a first-name basis with the president of the United States, after all, unlike the French, who when they’re not busy vouvoying one another are addressing one another as madame or monsieur, concealing their first names like ATM codes.2009, Debra Ollivier, What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →ISBN
   • “But I thought superiors can tutoyer those under them.” “They can. Sometimes. Take Officer Kaczmarek for example. He tutoye’s some instructors, and some do it back to him. But not all of them. My director asked me to tutoyer him because we’re part of the same administrative team. There are three...2013, Kevin G. Karpiak, “Adjusting La Police: The Use of Distance in the Calibration of Legitimate Violence among the Police Nationale”, in William Garriott, editor, Policing and Contemporary...

   Synonyms:

   vousvoyer