sobriquet / soubriquet
noun

- an informal name or title given to someone or something

- a name given to someone or something other than its real or official name

- a humorous epithet, assumed name, or nickname

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

English borrowed sobriquet / soubriquet from French in the 1640s. The French word, attested from the 15th century, carried two apparently unrelated senses: “nickname, jest” and, literally, “a chuck under the chin” — a light tap.

Trace it further back and you reach early forms such as soubzbriquet, where soubz (modern sous, from Latin sub, “under”) supplies the “under-the-chin” gesture.

How a playful poke beneath the jaw came to mean a nickname is genuinely uncertain; the deeper origin is unknown. The two spellings have coexisted for centuries, with sobriquet now dominant and soubriquet the older-looking variant.

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NAMES TO REMEMBER

- The Iron Lady — Margaret Thatcher. Coined by a Soviet army newspaper in 1976 as an insult; she embraced it so thoroughly it became a compliment.


- The Sun King (Le Roi Soleil) — Louis XIV, who cast himself as Apollo and made the sun his personal emblem, with all of France orbiting Versailles.


- The Lady with the Lamp — Florence Nightingale. A phrase popularised by The Times for her habit of making night-time rounds among wounded soldiers


- Il Divino (The Divine One) — Michelangelo, called this in his own lifetime, a rare honour for an artist then ranked socially with tradesmen.


- The Maid of Orléans — Joan of Arc, tied forever to the siege she lifted, though she called herself simply La Pucelle, “the Maiden.”


- The Desert Fox — Erwin Rommel, a name given partly by his British opponents, a grudging tribute to a battlefield cunning they respected.


- Bloody Mary — Mary I of England, whose persecution of Protestants earned a sobriquet now better known as a brunch cocktail than a queen.


- The Bard of Avon — William Shakespeare, first called “the Bard” by David Garrick in 1769, over 150 years after the playwright’s death.


- The Little Corporal (Le Petit Caporal) — Napoleon, affectionately named by his own troops for his modest rank and his habit of standing among them.


History forgets full names, but never a good sobriquet.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

alias, appellation, byname, cognomen, epithet, handle, moniker, nickname, nom de guerre, pet name, pseudonym, SOBRIQUET, tag

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THANKS to Florian for suggesting today’s OWAD.

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“My favourite SOBRIQUET is ‘The Lady with the Lamp’ describing Florence Nightingale.“

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