Talk:famous

Perhaps there are some more definitions of this word?

Not sure how one would define this.

I ran across the following sentence out of a translation of Moliere's "L'avare":

HARPAGON: Exactly what I say every day! With their effeminate voices, their three little bits of a beard turned up like cat's whiskers, their tow wigs, their flowing breeches and open breasts!

FROSINE: Yes; they are famous guys compared with yourself. In you we see something like a man. --Mavrisa 03:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

That quote makes me want to see the original French word and check the date and quality of the translation. DCDuring TALK 23:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Google books finds only one translation with those words, that of Charles Heron Hall in 1879. He was a French teacher, not a poet or dramatist.

Here is the French text:

Harpagon C'est ce que ie dis tous les jours, avec leur ton de Poule laitée, & leurs trois petits brins de barbe releuez en barbe de Chat, leurs perruques d'étoupes, leurs hauts-de-chauffes tout tombans, & leurs eflomaes débraillez.

Frosine. Eh! cela est bien basty aupres d'une Personne comme vous. Voila un Homme cela. Il y a là dequoy satisfaire à la veue ; & c'est ainsi qu'il faut estre fait, & vestu, pour donner de l'amour.

I'm not sure I can render "bien basty" into English. It seems idiomatic, literally meaning "sufficed well", I think, from an old ? form of baster#French (which we don't have).

The translator must have been trying to be colloquial. So perhaps it is a missing sense of his time. DCDuring TALK 23:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

A modern translation of the sentence is "Oh there mighty well got up indeed compared to a man like you." which suggests the idiomaticity. DCDuring TALK 23:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)