The Oeils Have It
Pardon My French
The French word oeil, which rhymes with ‘boy’, has yet to obtain a full-time job in the general-purpose lexicon of the English language. I has, however, found much work to do in specialized vocabularies.
coup d’oeil
Longtime readers of Pardon My French may remember coup d’oeil. Often translated as ‘strike of the eye’, this expression, often heard in military circles, as well as the related realms of firefighting, emergency medicine, and law enforcement, describes the ability of a person to make quick sense of a complex, dynamic, fast-changing situation.
