"Manufacture", "homage", "Uhrwerk", "ébauche": common words used to dress up basic things

Yes.

And if by polyglot you mean capable of saying dirty words, your mom, stop, go away, and where is the bathroom in Pashtu, Farsi, French, Spanish, Massai, and Arabic, then sure.....👀🤏🏻😂😆😜

But seeing as I had to Google exactly what ébauche meant, and I have zero chance of saying it right, I don't think my vote counts if we're being honest.

They bother me far less that the constant use of "horology". You like watches, you aren't a scientist...

It's like collecting old aneroid barometers, or thermometers, and claiming it's meteorology.

Yes. Possibly even worse. It's so pretentious.

Horology you say? NIST or NPL?

The thing about "ébauche" is that when I first heard it I thought "rough sketch" as I'd only ever come across it in an art/painting context.

I wouldn't be harsh on "manufacture", since it is a single word with a precise meaning: A factory where majority of the work is done manually by the workers. It's also an English word. I just suspect it's overused. Big brands don't manufacture. Only some high-end low-volume watchmakers do.

"Tribute" is a good word and would stop being "homage" skunked into a "copied design". Too late now, I'm afraid.

No opinion on the rest.

To me "manufacture" sounds like a proto-factory that existed under the ancienne régime in the 18th century. And/or something that makes fine porcelain and retains "manufacture" for marketing purposes. Like the various German Porzellanmanufakture which also desperately cling onto their aristocratic origins.

Let me, as a monolinguist, defend "ebauche." This is the term that has been used by the industry for more than a century to describe unfinished movements. They were unfinished for tax, tariff, and trade reasons, but the word describes exactly what they are. Why use two words when one precise one will do?

I use the word "manufacturer" for precision as well. My watch maker is a paunchy middle-aged man with a loupe, so the English "maker" won't work. The great thing about English is its ability to borrow words. A watch manufacturer may also be a brand, company, producer, or concern.

Your intuitive understanding is not far off: it's simply "manus" (hand) + "factor" (maker). In other words, "before mechanisation". It was a more efficinet and faster mode of producing stuff than a solo artisan doing it.

The meaning shifted now and the simple act of producing something in a factory is now "manufacturing". CAM means "computer aided manufacturing", i. e. writing a set of instructions for a machine to do your bidding, or even better, dumping a virtual 3D model into a CAM program and letting it program all the steps by itself, with just minimal input from the production engineer.

Ebauche is triggering?

We’ll be upset at calling them watches next.

What is this "triggered"? I am mildly tickled by anglophone pretension but haven't come across this.

As an english speaker that has consistently failled every time I try to learn a foreign language I dont care either way but lean towards using the original french and german terms because they convey nuances in usage that get lost when trying to do a translation.

Manufacture, ebauche, and some other words have a particular (though sometimes vague) meaning, history, usage and context in watches that gets lost if run through google translate and turned into "factory", "movement" - definition and meaning are not the same thing.

That said, there are others that do annoy me, the social media driven debasement of "homage" always makes me wince.

Sure, ébauche has acquired a specific meaning in the watchmaking industry. But to any francophone it just means "rough sketch/first draft". The thing that makes me cringe is when these foreign words are given extra special meaning by anglophone watch fans just because they're from a foreign language and so sound exotic to them when they're not. Out of interest what's wrong with "watchmaker" for "watchmaker"?

100% in agreement on borrowing being one of the great enrichers of languages. Not just English, all of them do it.

I'll give ébauche a pass - as @Aurelian rightly points out it has now become a technical trade term separate from its general French meaning.

I still find "manufacture" pretentious clutching at straws to elevate industrially mass produced watches into something more special.

Pax vobiscum!

Don't the French have an Academy to keep French from overborrowing (The Académie Française)? But to your main point: didn't the Swiss start the whole ebauche label? It is not like the English speaking world just grabbed it from a pile of French nouns on the floor. The Swiss have been amusing the speakers of French and German for centuries, how would an English speaker know?

"Baltic is a fine watchmaker." "I took it to my watchmaker, Brad." It just seems that I should use different words in those sentences. It may just be an idiosyncrasy of mine. I use fewer contractions than most, as another example.

Sacre bleu!

"If you’re unfamiliar with the horological terminology..." there's you're problem there. If you enter a field, any field, expecting words to have common meanings and not prepared for jargon you are going to come a cropper.

That is so true, its the height of rudeness to point out to non english speakers (or really non australians - australians that speak other languages seems to have no issues) have no clue how to pronounce Australia ('straylia)or Melbourne (melbun).

More seriously - another thing that happens is that some disabilities really only become clear when you try and move to another language. For example, I have a very slight issue with being tongue tied. If I had grown up speaking french/italian/spanish (in particular) this would have been obvious and I'd have had corrective surgery as a child, but in english I learnt a way around it unless Im tired or distracted. People have similar issues with hearing - they simply can't hear the sound you think they should be making and havent found a work around.

So perhaps when you mock a non-speaker for butchering pronunciation you're actually making fun of a disability.

here's an example I stumbled across recently, "a watch collection" and "a collection of watches" is both the same thing and fundamentally different as the movement of words from subject to object sees words retain meaning but shift in usage and connotation.

I'm a Midwestern American and I've never felt the words "manufacture" or "homage" to be awkward.

Obviously they are loanwords, but they're so commonplace they just seem like plain English. Would you cringe at someone calling a hotel to place a "reservation?"

Also this post reminds me of this Simpsons bit:

https://youtu.be/m5t9w98afJo?si=ao8WD8TYyHmIKzc_

Homage can get lost 🙄at least music is more honest with cover version and credit the composer

Ugh - you try-hard. Use “booking” or just stay at home.

It is fascinating to me how much more rhotic American English is than almost anywhere else in the Anglosphere. If you ever go to Melbourne, Florida don't forget to bring your "r". I can't roll my "r's" in Spanish for the same reason you have given.

It’s like skiing in Europe. If you go off the groomer they call it off piste. Across the pond we call it out of bounds.

Even the definition of off piste, on an unprepared, trackless area away from regular ski runs.

10 words and a comma to say 3 words, out of bounds.

I cringe at saying off piste 😝 so I understand.✌🏻

When I lived in the States (mostly Seattle) there were so many expats that locals seemed to just roll with the phonic punches - but head southeast and it got difficult fast.

Yeah, I feel pain when someone who had memorized a boat load of references pats themselves on the back for being a horologist.

I have no issue with manufacture(r) though I really want to popularize more accurate verbiage. I also hear people say watchmaker when referring to a brand - many brands now may not have an actual watchmaker anywhere along the way…

My proposal is this:

Manufacturer: factory or individual actually creating the parts

Watchmaker: in many cases a certified individual

And the new one

Producer: someone who elicits the services of manufacturers and watchmakers to produce their design or a watch.

For instance, many brand owners or brands get referred to as watchmaker or manufacturer when they are neither and the word producer more accurately describes what they’re actually doing. Removes some of the romanticism but it’s replaced with realism.

I'm Dutch. Had French, German, English and Latin at school. So for me they are just words.

I don’t know. Gives it that je ne sais quoi 👀

Oh shit you explained ebauche in the OP, good looks.

It also bothers me when people say “sea swimming” or “wild camping”. We live by the sea, of course you were in the fucking sea. We all go in the sea, it’s over there, you’re grand

That’s hilarious now that I think about it.

Bit like those folks putting their PIN number in at the ATM machine.