versatile

[Neil Coffey]

To English eyes, the French word versatile looks innocent enough. After all, in English, one would talk about, say, a versatile musician. Being "versatile" is generally considered to be a positive quality of something or somebody.

Well, not so in French. In French, being versatile is generally a negative quality, used to describe something or somebody that is "forever changing" or "liable to change". We might translate it with words such as erratic, fickle, changeable etc..

Interestingly, the word versatile in English used to have more of this negative meaning. If you look at the definition in Webster's 1913 edition, for example, you'll find as one of the glosses "Liable to be turned in opinion", and other paraphrases such as "unsteady", "inconstant".