Pronounced: HAL-see-uhn, adj
Notes: There are multiple definitions; I knew one of them
Yesterday’s phrase
The phrase de rigueur means “required by fashion, custom, or etiquette”
First usage
Our phrase came into English in the mid-1800s
Background / Comments
I know I have read this phrase; I think it was in one of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy Sayers, but I could not begin to guess at which novel. I had a very general sense of the phrase from the context, but I don’t know that I could define it properly. Our phrase (as you might guess) came from the French phrase de rigueur (“of strictness”), which came from the Latin word rigor.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 