MONTAGE

[Dr. Goodword]

• montage •

Pronunciation: mahn-tazh • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. An artistic composition created from bits and pieces of other objects, such as a picture made up of pieces from other pictures. 2. (Motion pictures) Editing style, the selecting and arranging of scenes and transitions in putting together a motion picture.

Notes: No doubt because it mostly haunts the world of arts, today's Good Word has not wandered far from its original French pronunciation. The sequence GE in French is pronounced [zh]. However, it often converts to English [j] in borrowed words, like garage and the suffix -age we see in mileage and footage. It can only be pronounced [zh] in today's word, though.

In Play: Today's Good Word probably is used most often to refer to a work of art: "The mural created on the wall of the hall was a montage of objects left by students on the floor of the school when they left on summer vacation." The second sense of today's word is used figuratively to refer to a series of diverse objects or events: "Montague's life was a montage of colorful adventures encircling the globe."

Word History: The Proto-Indo-European word mont-/ment- seems to have referred to prominences, objects jutting out. It obviously went on to become the mount in mountain and the verb meaning to get up on something high (mount a horse). In Latin it turns up as mentum "chin" and in Germanic languages it came to mean "mouth", as in German Mund, something located near the chin. Projections and prominences can be threatening, so Latin minax (minac-s) took on that meaning before English borrowed the Old French version of it, as menace. (The montage of information about today's Good Word was brought to prominence by a suggestion from Loren Baldwin.)

[Slava]

Montazh also has a Russian usage. Along the lines of both the definitions, it means putting parts together according to a plan. As in a pre-fab house, or bookcase. A Tab A into Slot B kind of thing.