Sunday Rest: briquette. Word Not To Use Today.

Good grief, this word is horrible. Not only is that -ette ending irretrievably naff, but it proclaims itself to be so vastly sophisticated that you have to pronounce it as if it's French: briKETT.

Now, if a briquette were some dish of lobster spiked with truffles and scattered with the sweat of mermaids then I might just possibly be able to forgive the silly word its pretensions, but a briquette is, usually, a pebble-shaped thing made of coal dust and sawdust for throwing on the fire.

(Photo by Vladsinger)

My Collins dictionary suggests that one can also talk of a briquette of ice cream - and, as far as I know, there are indeed no laws against it. 

Except those, obviously, of taste.

Worst still (do steel yourselves) this horrible little word can be used as a verb.

I could quite easily give you an example. 

But, don't worry, I won't.

Word Not To Use Today: briquette. This word is French. (It isn't anything like so horrible in French.) There's an Old English word brecan which means to break, which is probably related.