patois (French dialect); patois (any regional dialect); saying, maxim, proverb, adage
“Depuis, deux puissants romanciers, dont l’un est un profond observateur du cœur humain, l’autre un intrépide ami du peuple, Balzac et Eugène Süe, ayant fait parler des bandits dans leur langue naturelle comme l’avait fait en 1828 l’auteur du Dernier jour d’un condamné, les mêmes réclamations se sont élevées. On a répété : — Que nous veulent les écrivains avec ce révoltant patois ? l’argot est odieux ! l’argot fait frémir !” — After two powerful novelists, one a deep observer of the human soul, the other an adventurous friend of the people, Balzac and Eugene Sue, made their bandit characters speak in their natural language just as the author of The Last Day of a Condemned Man had done in 1828, the same complaints were raised. Some said again and again, "What do these writers want to do to us with this disgusting dialect? The slang is terrible! The slang makes anyone shiver!
Inherited from Middle French patois (“local dialect”), from Old French patois (“incomprehensible speech, rude language”), alteration (due to influence of the suffix -ois in words relating to nationalities and languages) of earlier *patoi, a deverbal of patoier (“to gesticulate, handle clumsily, paw”), from pate (“paw”), from Vulgar Latin *patta (“paw, foot”), from Frankish *patta (“paw, sole of the foot”), from Proto-Germanic *pat-, *paþa- (“to walk, tread, go, step”), of uncertain origin and re