Capitalizing “French”

Dear Mr. B___:

You wrote:

>>I’ve read the rule about capitalizing adjectives based upon proper nouns, but what about verbs so constructed?

>>My dictionary has “Anglicizing” capitalized, same for the grotesque “to French-fry”. Are these proper? I am especially concerned with “French kissing”, most notably whether the slang shorthand “Frenching” has any proper form. (Sorry, but that one pays the bills, sad to say.)
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The standard in most cases is to keep the capital. I certainly would with “French kissing” and probably “Frenching” as well, though it might be advisable to put that in quotation marks to indicate slang unless you were using it in a quotation.

Having said that, some words which began as proper adjectives or proper nouns sometimes have taken on a special meaning that has so little to do with the origin that they are often no longer capitalized. The best example today is probably “bourbon,” which comes from the name of the French royal family. Occasionally you do see “teddy bear” and “french fries” because some no longer consider these proper names any more; however, most authorities still capitalize them.

I do agree that “French frying” is somewhat grotesque. I would encourage you to come up with a different expression for that one, e.g. “making French fries.” Still, in most places not capitalizing “French” would stand out. Unless you wanted to call attention to your grammar, I would advise sticking with the capital letter.

2 thoughts on “Capitalizing “French””

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