MovieChat Forums > Le chat (1971) Discussion > Greffier

Greffier

posted 12 years ago by boileau
2 replies | jump to latest

Reading the plot summary, one could think that the cat was named "Greffier".
In fact "greffier" is a colloquial (slang ?) term meaning "cat".
"Le greffier" is the secretary of a judge having authority to sign legal papers.
This signature is called "griffe" (scratch) and as cats have a tendancy to scratch anything, including expensive pieces of furniture, they are nick-named "greffier".

[–] swanstep (2616) 4 years ago

Thanks for this clarification for those of us with weak or no French. So "Greffier" is the exact equivalent of "Scratchy" or any other broadly synecdochic (uses a name for a part for the whole) name for a cat in English, e.g., "Whiskers", "Furball".

[–] captainbucky (15252) 4 years ago

That flea infested mongral