Or, the False Friend

French, like many other European Languages, has a fair share of faux amis [hear], meaning false friends. A classic example, of course, is Librairie [hear], which is not a library but a book store, and lit [hear], which is not the past tense of light but bed. There is a whole range of these, but the one that occurs most frequently and causes me to do a double take is the tiniest of all faux amis, or [hear]. It could mean ‘gold’ or – the one that occurs more frequently in text and gives me maximum headache – means ‘however’, ‘but’, etc. Every time I encounter this tiny word, my English educated mind almost always defaults to ‘either … or’ kind of translation.