billet-doux

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The Word of the Day for February 13 is:

billet-doux   \ bill-ee-DOO\   noun
     : a love letter

Example sentence:
     Poor George spent hours laboring over a billet-doux, only to have his 
girlfriend toss it aside and demand, "Where are my roses?"

Did you know?
     The first recorded use of the French word ?billet doux? (literally, "sweet 
letter") in an English context occurs in John Dryden's 1673 play _Marriage 
a-la-Mode_. In the play, Dryden pokes fun at linguistic Francophiles in English 
society through the comic character Melanthe, who is described by her 
prospective lover Rodophil as follows: "No lady can be so curious of a new 
fashion as she is of a new French word; she's the very mint of the nation, and 
as fast as any bullion comes out of France, coins it immediately into our 
language." True to form, Melanthe describes Rodophil with the following words: 
"Let me die, but he's a fine man; he sings and dances en Francais, and writes 
the billets doux to a miracle." 






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