English

Alternative forms

• façon-de-parler (in attributive use)

Noun

façon de parler ‎(plural façons de parler)

1. A turn of phrase or rhetorical formula, especially one that ought not to be taken literally, but rather as employed for convenience of expression only.
   • 1999: Simon Blackburn, Think: A compelling introduction to philosophy, chapter 7: The World, section 6: Kant’s Revolution, pages 258–259 (Oxford University Press, paperback, ISBN 0199690871)

     This might all seem grist to Berkeley’s mill. Berkeley himself knew that we interpret our experience in spatio-temporal, objective terms. But he thought we had to ‘speak with the vulgar but think with the learned’: in other words, learn to regard that interpretation as a kind of façon de parler, rather than the description of a real, independent, objective world.

References

• “‖façon de parler” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]

French

Noun

façon de parler f ‎(plural façons de parler)

1. façon de parler

   Désolé si je t'ai vexé, c'était une façon de parler.

   Sorry for having annoyed you, it was a façon de parler.