_Encore_ and _mise-en-scène_ are only two of a dozen or a score of
French words not infrequently used in English and misused by being
charged with meanings not strictly in accord with French usage. 'Levee'
is one; the French say _lever_. _Nom de plume_ is another; the French
say _nom de guerre_. _Musicale_ also is rarely, if ever, to be found
in French, at least I believe it to be the custom in Paris to call
an 'evening with music' a _soirée musicale_. If _musicale_ is too
serviceable to demand banishment, why should it not drop the _e_ and
become _musical_? When Theodore Roosevelt, always as exact as he was
vigorous in his use of language, was President of the United States, the
cards of invitation which went out from the White House bore 'musical'
in one of their lower corners; so that the word, if not the King's
English, is the President's English.

To offset this I must record with regret that the late Clyde Fitch once
wrote a one-act play about a manicurist, and as this operator on the
finger-nails was a woman he entitled his playlet, the _Manicuriste_; and
he did this in spite of the fact that, as a writer fairly familiar with
French, he ought to have known the proper term--_manucure_.

Then there is _double-entendre_, implying a secondary meaning of
doubtful delicacy. Dryden used it in 1673, when it was apparently
good French, although it has latterly been superseded in France by
_double-entente_--which has not, however, the somewhat sinister
suggestion we attach to _double-entendre_. I noted it in Trench's
'Calderon' (in the 1880 reprint); and also in Thackeray; and both
Calderon and Thackeray were competent French scholars.