Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Chauffeur
If you know French, you may recognize that the word “chauffeur” sounds like the French word meaning “to warm” or “one who warms.” Which is exactly what it is. The French word comes from the Latin “calefacere,” – to make warm – from “calor,” which means heat. Related words are chafe, calorie, caldron, chowder, even nonchalant. Chafe means to warm by rubbing or to irritate, a calorie is a unit of heat, cauldron and chowder were the original hot pots and nonchalant means cool, calm and collected, literally not hot.
The first chauffeurs were people paid to keep steam engines going. Operating a steam engine required checking the water level in the boiler and priming and igniting the wood, coal or kerosene, then waiting until there was enough pressure to run the engine. Since this process could take more than a half hour, the job of keeping the engine hot and running on railroads and steamships was an important one. Some of the first automobiles were also steam-powered and early French automobile chauffeurs were employed both to maintain the engines and to drive the owners. As gas-powered engines became popular, chauffeurs were no longer needed to keep the engines stoked but they remained on as drivers. The job title stayed with them although they now performed routine maintenance and kept the car clean and polished. They also had to have the mechanical skill to handle breakdowns and flat tires which occurred frequently in early automobiles. Eventually the French used the word for anyone paid to drive others around. As cars became popular, the word was carried into the English language where it tends to be associated with luxury and wealth. If you want to be technically correct, a female employed to drive a passenger vehicle is a chauffeuse, although I expect that if you used that term most people would hand you a tissue and say “Bless you!”
