French puisné becomes puny when it crosses the water to land in the English-speaking world. Petit turns petty. That's how words naturalize. They adapt to their new surroundings.
They lose their accent marks. They shed their silent letters. They drop markers of their previous lives when they enter the land of Anglophonia.
alley-oop (al-ee-OOP) Phonetic respelling of French allez-hop or allez-oop, cry of a circus performer about to leap. Earliest documented use: 1923.
kickshaw (KIK-shaw) fancy dish, delicacy, trinket.
From phonetic respelling of French quelque chose (something) as kickshaws which was treated as a plural and turned into the singular kickshaw. Earliest documented use: 1598.
toot sweet (toot sweet) Phonetic respelling of French tout de suite (at once, straight away). Earliest documented use: 1917.
parry (PAR-ee)
From French parez (ward off), imperative of parer (to ward off), from Latin parare (to set or prepare). Earliest documented use: 1655.
Mayday or mayday (MAY-day)
Mayday is an international radio distress signal used by ships and aircraft to call for help. It's a phonetic respelling of French m'aidez (help me), from me (me) + aidez, imperative of aider (to help). Earliest documented use: 1927. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Dennis Zickerman Subject: alley-oop Def: interjection: Used as an exhortation or to signal the start of an activity; noun: basketball move. Also, in football, a long pass into the endzone, thrown on a high arc, allowing the receiver to leap higher than the defenders to catch the ball. Made famous by Joe Montana to R.C. Owens.
From: Maireaine Cohen Subject: Alley Oop Does anyone remember the old caveman comic strip? The caveman was named Alley Oop, and he rode on a dinosaur. There was also a novelty song in the early 60s of the same name, about the caveman character.
From: Janet Rizvi Subject: kickshaw Def: 1. A fancy dish; delicacy. 2. A trinket. Way back in the fifties, when perhaps I'd missed a supervision (Cambridge-speak for tutorial) for some reason or other, my supervisor sent me a note: 'Come on [day & time] armed with an essay on a subject of your choice. Knock up a dainty little kickshaw.' I've always cherished that.
From: Barbara Ulman Subject: toot sweet Def: Quickly; immediately.
Claude Bolling wrote a suite for trumpet, piano, and percussion named Toot Suite.
From: Viv Brown Subject: toot sweet Impossible to see this word without thinking of the wonderful song from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". Some great lyrics in this musical (loosely based on a story by Ian Fleming) from the Sherman Brothers:
"Don't waste your pucker on some all day sucker And don't try a toffee or cream
If you seek perfection in sugar confection Well there's something new on the scene
A mouth full of cheer A sweet without peer A musical morsel supreme!
Toot Sweets! Toot Sweets! The candies you whistle, the whistles you eat. Toot Sweets!
From: Dave Zobel subject: Mayday: Radio distress signals of the ancient Romans Def: A distress signal; a call for help. As a first-year Latin student, I was delighted to realize that the second-declension vocative "mee dee" (pron.: "may day") translates as "O my God!" As a second-year Latin student, I was heartbroken to discover that both "meus" and "deus" are irregular in the vocative, and thus "mee dee" translates as "Me no talking Latin so good."
From: Richard Stallman Subject: m'aidez There is something strange about "m'aidez": it's not the usual way to say "help me" in French. That would be "aidez-moi", the imperative. " M'aidez" is indicative, as in "Vous m'aidez beaucoup"; the subjunctive, which could be used in a command, would be "m'aidez", as in "Je veux que vous m'aidez." So why did "m'aidez" get used there? A number of readers raised this. Thanks to everyone who wrote. The English word mayday is a phonetic respelling not of m'aidez, but m'aider, which is a clipping of venez m'aider (come help me). -Anu Garg

In a potentially costly setback for Google, a federal appeals court on April 5 ruled that its YouTube video site must once again defend itself from a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Hollywood giant Viacom. The decision revives one of the most important Internet intellectual property cases of the last decade — a dispute that became a flashpoint in the ongoing struggle over copyright between big content companies and internet giants. The case dates back to March of 2007, less than a year after Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. In its lawsuit, Viacom argued that YouTube’s explosive growth was based, in part, on users posting videos of Viacom’s programs, including South Park and The Daily Show. In its defense, Google argued that the DMCA protected YouTube from liablity because the site promptly takes down infringing content once it is notified. According to the DMCA, safe harbor protection applies if an Internet service provider like Youtube “responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing.” http://business.time.com/2012/04/06/federal-court-revives-landmark-1-billion-viacom-vs-youtube-case/

Monumental error On April 5, a tractor-trailer rig that turned from U.S. 24 onto River Road in Maumee, Ohio knocked over a monument and dragged it through two communities for 4 miles. "We are very fortunate it wasn't destroyed," Marilyn Wendler, curator of the Maumee Valley Historical Society, said of the monument. The marker at River Road and South Detroit Avenue in Maumee denotes the importance of the Great Trail, made by Native Americans before the French and Indian War, which extended from Detroit to Pittsburgh and was used by the French and British and by Gen. William Henry Harrison in 1812. The trail was regarded as the most important early route of the central west, according to the inscription on the marker that was erected in 1913 by the Daughters of the American Revolution, ¬Ursula Wolcott Chapter. Joe Camp, Maumee's director of public service, said the city has contacted Design Memorial of Maumee to assess the damage to engravings on the back of the marker before it determines how long the restoration would take. The concrete monument was chipped, but the front metal plate was intact. If the driver is cited in the incident, the bill will be turned over to his insurance company, Mr. Camp said. http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/04/05/Semi-drags-monument-from-Maumee-to-South-Toledo.html

GOSHEN, N.Y. April 7, 2012— As Modernist buildings reach middle age, many of the stark structures that once represented the architectural vanguard are showing signs of wear, setting off debates around the country between preservationists, who see them as historic landmarks, and the many people who just see them as eyesores. The conflict has come in recent months to this quaint village 60 miles north of New York City — with its historic harness-racing track, picturesque Main Street and Greek Revival, Federal and Victorian houses — where the blocky concrete county government center designed by the celebrated Modernist architect Paul Rudolph has always been something of a misfit. Edward A. Diana, the Orange County executive, wants to demolish it, an idea that has delighted many residents but alarmed preservationists, local and national, who say the building should be saved. The county legislature is expected to decide whether to demolish or renovate it next month. Those who want to save it call it a prime example of an architectural style called Brutalism that rejected efforts to prettify buildings in favor of displaying the raw power of simple forms and undisguised building materials, like the center’s textured facade. “Preservation is not simply about saving the most beautiful things,” said Mark Wigley, the dean of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “It’s about saving those objects that are an important part of our history and whose value is always going to be a subject of debate.” Rudolph, who died in 1997, was a prominent Modernist architect who also designed Yale’s Art and Architecture Building, among others. Architectural historians say the Goshen government center, which features protruding cubes and a corrugated concrete facade resembling corduroy, represents Rudolph at his best. But Mr. Benton, the county legislator, called it “a world monument to inefficiency.” Robin Pogrebin http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/07/arts/design/unloved-building-in-goshen-ny-prompts-debate-on-modernism.html

The Titanic's plunge into the frigid Atlantic was predicted several years before the disaster — not by an oracle or in a conspiracy theory but in seemingly innocuous works of fiction about shipwrecks. The most striking and prophetic example is The Sinking of a Modern Liner, written in 1886 by English journalist W.T. Stead. The story is eerily similar to the actual Titanic's ill-fated demise. In Stead's book, an ocean liner leaves Liverpool and while on a journey to New York City, becomes involved in a collision. In the ensuing panic, many passengers drown because there are too few lifeboats. In a strange twist of fate, Stead inadvertently foretold his own death in the book: he was onboard the Titanic when it sank in April 1912. Stead's book was not the only pseudo-supernatural foretelling of the Titanic tragedy. There was also Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, written in 1898 by American author Morgan Robertson. Here, a ship called the Titan is also deemed "unsinkable" but hits an ice shelf and does just that, sinking off the coast of Newfoundland, much akin to the Titanic. Read of other stories at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/titanic/story/2012/03/30/f-titanic-fiction-predictions.html

Traditionally, the April full moon is known as "the Pink Moon," supposedly as a tribute to the grass pink or wild ground phlox, considered one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring. Other monikers include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon and, among coastal Native American tribes, the Full Fish Moon, for when the shad came upstream to spawn. The origins of these names have been traced back to Native America, though they may also have evolved from old England. The first full moon of spring is usually designated as the Paschal Full Moon or the Paschal Term. Traditionally, Easter is observed on the Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon . If the Paschal Moon occurs on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday. Following these rules, we find that the date of Easter can fall as early as March 22 and as late as April 25. Pope Gregory XIII decreed this in 1582 as part of the Gregorian calendar. Interestingly, these rules also state that the vernal equinox is fixed on March 21, despite the fact that from the years 2008 through 2101, at European longitudes it actually will occur no later than March 20. Adding additional confusion is that there is also an "ecclesiastical" full moon, determined from ecclesiastical tables, whose date does not necessarily coincide with the "astronomical" full moon, which is based solely on astronomical calculations. In 1981, for example, the full moon occurred on Sunday, April 19, so Easter should have occurred on the following Sunday, April 26. But based on the ecclesiastical full moon, it occurred on the same day of the astronomical full moon, April 19. Hence, there can sometimes be discrepancies between the ecclesiastical and astronomical versions for dating Easter. In the year 2038, for instance, the equinox will fall on March 20, with a full moon the next day, so astronomically speaking, Easter should fall on March 28 of that year. So in practice, the date of Easter is determined not from astronomical computations but rather from other formulae such as Golden Numbers. Joe Rao http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-the-moon-affects-the-date-of-easter

Full Moon Names and Their Meanings http://www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names/