Art and culture

The list for an evening out and the words written about it afterwards. One of them English borrowed and then used for something else entirely. Le parterre in a French theatre is the ground floor of the house — the seats on the flat, nearest the stage: nous étions au parterre. English took the word for the formal garden instead, the geometric flower beds laid out in front of a great house, which is the other thing French calls un parterre — literally « on the ground », which fits both. The English for the theatre sense is « the stalls », and a sentence putting the audience « in the parterre » seats them in a flower bed. French does use le parterre de fleurs for the garden, so the two senses live side by side there and the qualifier decides — but in a theatre the word needs nothing added.