Whistling candy
"Toot sweet" is a play on the French phrase "tout de suite" (which translates to "immediately" or "at once"). Both phrases are pronounced roughly the same.
From: Weclome Back
Posted on: 23:08, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Arguments for:
- This is the origin of the phrase - anything else that used it was borrowing it from the French phrase in the first place.
Arguments against:
- This is the exact phrase that an entire song was written about in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." I'm not saying that it's a reference to that either, only that there are multiple possibilities.
- Not that I'm saying this isn't accurate or anything, but it's really not that worth saying.
- Not worth saying? I certainly wouldn't have known what it meant before taking French, and even after taking it the best I had was a vague consciousness that I should know what it meant. People will look in Explanations for, well, some explanation.
- Um... does this fact even apply if the transcript is showing the original French phrase rather than "toot sweet"? :P
Additional comments:
- Re: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Where do you think they got the phrase from?
- They invented a candy that made a "toot" sound when you blew in it. That's where they got it from.
- And where do you think they... etc. etc.
- The candy in Chitty was a pun on 'toute de suite' as well.
- Furthermore, at one point during the song, one of the characters makes a pun by using the name of the candy in place of the French phrase.
- The second "T" in "tout" is silent. Marzipan mispronounces it.
- Which might be relevant if the real phrase wasn't "tout de suite".
- Marzipan's line is certainly heavily Anglicized, but all of the resources I can find show the internal -t- as being pronounced. None of the pronunciations I can find have the "de" factoring in at all (or it blends with the first word). I have reworded the item above accordingly.
- Actually, the "de" is the "t". The "t" is silent, but the "de" makes up for it (final unaccented Es, even in two-letter words, are usually not pronounced.) So, it's "tou-d-suit", which sounds very much like "toot sweet".
- Given which, I don't feel that it even qualifies as "heavily Anglicized". Okay, her vowels are a little bright, but that's not "heavily."
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