Once upon a monologue, Rory Sutherland, the author of Alchemy, shared the sad saga of the record-company executive who, shortly before the Beatles rose to planet-wide prominence, turned down an opportunity to sign that band to his label. In the course of telling this tale, Mr. Sutherland, dropped a reference to the oeuvre of a competing band, thereby treating his listeners to a wee anomaly. After all, while the Frasieresque among us often refer to the oeuvres of the like of T.S. Eliot, they will only apply it to the pop music of the early 1960s when indulging in irony.
In keeping with the Law of Specialization, oeuvre changed its meaning when, sometime during the reign of Queen Victoria, it took the ferry from Calais to Dover. In lands where people said parlez-vous without the preceding ‘hinky-dinky’, oeuvre might described any product of labor, whether mental or manual. (When the effort involved particular virtuosity, the result was chef-d’oeuvre, a ‘boss of work’ that, in the English-speaking world, might qualify as a ‘masterpiece’.) However, in the English-speaking world, it quickly acquired the exclusive meaning of ‘the set of writings written by a writer (or compositions composed by a composer) over the course of his career’.
Pronouncing oeuvre presents Anglophones with a bit of a dilemma. If we take the advice of Google Translate and rhyme oeuvre with with ‘hooray’, we place too much distance between the word and its Gallic roots. If, however, we strive for authenticity, we risk permanent damage to our vocal chords. With that in mind, I recommend that readers who wish to use oeuvre in conversation take the middle way modeled by Mr. Sutherland at minute mark 1:45 of the aforementioned video.
Note: The links will take you to YouTube, Thrift Books, and Deepl.
