Friday, September 13, 2013

Word of the Day

bordereau \bawr-duh-ROH; Fr. bawr-duh-ROH\,
noun:

a detailed memorandum, especially one in which documents are listed.

At the War Office, Dreyfus was told to take a letter from dictation, "'so phrased as to include some passages'" from the bordereau.
-- Richard Clark Sterne, "Dark Mirror," 1994

“We need a photograph of the bordereau,” he said when he met Dubon at his office that evening.
-- Kate Taylor, "A Man in Uniform," 2011

Bordereau comes from the French word of the same spelling, which is a diminutive form of the French word for board. It entered English in the late 1800s.

Dictionary.com