French phrase of the day: Us et coutumes
You might see it on a legal document.
What does it mean?
Us et coutumes
– pronounced
oos et coo-tyoom
– translates as practice and custom.
It's an intriguingly fixed phrase.
Us
is rarely used in modern French, except in the phrase
les us et coutumes
(rather than
les us et
les
coutumes).
It is sometimes used in legal contracts as a form of shorthand (
us and Coutumes des lieux
– according to local customs and practices) to avoid drafting lengthy clauses that would have to be stipulated separately.
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If you see it in a legal document it's worth double checking exactly what these customs and practices are, so you can avoid a surprise further down the road.
The word
us
is
a 17th-century term for practice, you may also see it
in the rather outdated expression '
avoir des us
', which means 'to have good manners / to know the ways of the world'.
If you're using the word use or usage in normal everyday French, you would say
l'usage
or
l'utilisation
.
Use it like this
Chaque pays a ses us et coutumes
– Each country has its customs and traditions.
Cette attitude est arrogante par rapport aux us et coutumes d'autres nations
– This attitude is arrogant in relation to the customs and conventions of other nations.
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