Crêpe and Croissant
Pardon My French is a lighthearted guide to words of French origin that, whether by sailing with Billy the Conk or riding the Eurostar through the Chunnel, somehow managed to sneak into the English language. You can find other posts in this series by means of this aggregator.
Crêpe, which describes fancy flimsy cloth, fancy flimsy paper or fancy flimsy pancakes with equal aplomb, has been in the English language so long that it is perfectly acceptable to make it rhyme with “grape” and “drape.” Indeed, attempts by Anglophone to pronounce it as the French do will invariably go amiss. (This is particularly true when referring to things other than comestibles. Thus, while “please put some whipped cream on my crêpes” is merely pretentious, “the widow wore a dress of black crêpe” borders on the bizarre.)
The Pillsbury Doughboy (who, I am happy to report, recently made a full recovery from a near-fatal yeast infection) solved the problem of the insolubly Gallic pronunciation of croissant by referring to the crescent-shaped pastries that emerged from his cunningly contrived cardboard cylinders as “crescent rolls.” If, however, you decline to embrace this particular pis aller, you can get by in most parts of the Anglosphere with “kruh-sawnt.” Whatever you do … please, please … for the love of all that’s tasty … refrain from saying “kroy-sawnt.”
Note: The links will take you to a translation program, whether Google Translate or DeepL, where a well-spoken robot will voice the word or phrase in question.
Dude, I struggled to gain mastery of CRRR WAH SAWN(t), and I will not lightly give it up.
Back in the days of no-pretense, we called them crescent rolls. We would also roll cheap hot dogs inside them because they just seemed so dang empty.