Toujours pur

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 95631

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Amanar" <naama2486 at y...> wrote:
> As we have all guessed (or knew), "Toujours Pur" is French 
> for "Always Pure" (the writing above the Black family tapestry).
> 
> However, when I checked my dictionary, it also translated "pur" 
> as "clean", which is the last thing one would think of describing 
> Grimmauld's Place...

Geoff:
According to the Concise Oxford French Dictionary, "pur" means (takes 
deep breath):

pure, unmingled, unalloyed, unadulterated, genuine, true, chaste, 
innocent, unsullied, clean, spotless, sheer, downright

Many of these are character referents rather than "household 
cleanliness" words. Interestingly, if I then look up "clean" in the 
English end of things, in addition to things like "propre" 
and ""cire", it gives:

(pure and fig) "pur"

- clean in a figurative sense. Going back to Black, the motto is 
obviously a pretty old one - the tapestry is described as "immensely 
old" and I therefore think that "pur" was meant to be "pure" in the 
tradition of those (slightly) fingers-down-the-throat exhortations on 
old armorial bearings such as "Honi soit qui mal y pense" or "Semper 
fidelis"! and my old grammar school motto "Rather deathe than false 
of faythe".

Nuff said.

:-)