gommeux

English translation: With the clean, well-combed and well-groomed look of two real slickers ready for double date

13:45 Sep 5, 2004

French to English translations [PRO]
Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / the text has been tranlated from american english. the subjects are young working-class american men in the 1950's.

French term or phrase: gommeux

Nettoyés, peignés, soignés comme deux gommeux se rendant à un double rendez-vous, ils se dirigèrent vers la voiture.

tapon (X)

English translation:With the clean, well-combed and well-groomed look of two real slickers ready for double date

Explanation:
it refers to the hair..gomina...the sticky stuff to keep the hair down

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Note added at 11 mins (2004-09-05 13:56:39 GMT)
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ready for double date....

OR

With the clean, slicked-back, well-groomed look of two guys ready for a double date...

since this is the FIFTIES, I would STAY away from the meaning of gommeux as dandy IN ENGLISH

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Note added at 13 mins (2004-09-05 13:58:27 GMT)
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gommeux= a stiff......word used to mean a guy, I think it was used in the fifties...of course, it ALSO means a dead body...bnut the expression, working class STIFF...is a working class guy...

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Note added at 14 mins (2004-09-05 13:59:56 GMT)
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FINAL; The clean, slicked-back, well-groomed pair looking like they were spruced up for a double date,

Selected response from:

Jane Lamb-Ruiz (X)

Grading comment

4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer

Summary of answers provided

5 +3

With the clean, well-combed and well-groomed look of two real slickers ready for double date

Jane Lamb-Ruiz (X)

5 +1

real cool hepcats / hipsters

CarolynB

4 +1

dandy

Katherine Hodkinson

greasers

Robert Schlarb

swells

Dylan Edwards

dudes

df49f (X)

2 +1

hip dudes

writeaway

men about town,

RHELLER

fop

Tegan Raleigh

Answers

8 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +3

With the clean, well-combed and well-groomed look of two real slickers ready for double date

Jane Lamb-Ruiz (X)
Works in field
Native speaker of:

English,

Portuguese
PRO pts in category: 80

36 mins confidence:

dudes

Explanation:
flashy dudes
(since your context is US)

à l'époque il y avait aussi les "zoot-suiters" qui correspondraient à cette description (but they were mostly Latinos, so maybe it wouldn't work for your context)

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Note added at 39 mins (2004-09-05 14:24:31 GMT)
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to Writeaway: les grandes pensées...! had not seen your answer yet while writing mine! your \"hip dudes\" is even better.

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Note added at 41 mins (2004-09-05 14:26:51 GMT)
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.. unless \"hip\" is an anachronism of the 60s rather than 50s (too young to remember though!!)

df49f (X)
France
Local time: 13:37
Native speaker of:

French
PRO pts in category: 4

29 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

hip dudes

Explanation:
my stab at '50's US English

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Note added at 45 mins (2004-09-05 14:30:11 GMT)
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DAVID STARR JORDAN
THE FASHION TRENDS AND HAIR STYLES OF THE 50\'s, WERE UNIQUE. ... HERE ARE SOME OF THE MORE POPULAR ONES, WE ALL THOUGHT MADE US \"COOL CHICKS\" & \"HIP DUDES.\". ...
community-2.webtv.net/Burnsie_Girl/ DAVIDSTARRJORDAN/page4.htm

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Note added at 48 mins (2004-09-05 14:33:54 GMT)
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AFAIK, hip started with the Beatniks and they got going in the 50\'s....

writeaway
Works in field
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 34

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)

neutral

Robert Schlarb: people weren't "hip" until the sixties and "dudes" were city-dwellers

8 mins

-> I really think that dudes orginally started in the 50's (meaning has changed a bit since). hip, cool etc. definitely got going in the beatnik era and that started in the 50's

agree

Jane Lamb-Ruiz (X): hep dudes......

14 mins

-> and coooooooooooool chicks (which ain't PC no longer)

neutral

Richard Benham: I think Robert has a point. "Dude" was a derogatory term for a city type. E.g., a "dude" ranch was a farm which offered accommodation and a taste of rural lifestyle to city folk. Also "hip" replaced "hep" in the '60s or so.

1 hr

-> that was/is one meaning. Dude ranches were all over the country a kind of holiday resort

40 mins confidence:

men about town,

Explanation:
PETIT ROBERT
gommeux
jeune homme que son élégance excessive et son air prétentieux rendent ridicule

854. Fop. Mawson, C.O. Sylvester. 1922. Roget s International Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
... NOUN: FINE GENTLEMAN, fop, swell [colloq.], dandy, exquisite, coxcomb, beau, macaroni [hist.]; blade, blood, buck [archaic], man about town, fast man, roué [F.];...

hip is a 60s term

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Note added at 1 hr 33 mins (2004-09-05 15:18:53 GMT)
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think Pat Boone (50s) as opposed to Dylan or The Byrds (60s)

RHELLER
United States
Local time: 05:37
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 38

2 hrs confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

real cool hepcats / hipsters

Explanation:
fifties slang

CarolynB
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 4

7 mins confidence:

peer agreement (net): +1

dandy

Explanation:
Le petit robert defines a gommeux as a man who is pretentious and excessively elegant, to the point of being ridiculous. Dandy isn't quite as derogative, but i think it's a similar concept.

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Note added at 8 mins (2004-09-05 13:53:16 GMT)
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sorry, for the context it should be plural, dandies.

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Note added at 4 hrs 39 mins (2004-09-05 18:25:02 GMT)
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i take everyone\'s point about dandy not being a 50s term, but then i\'m not sure if gommeux is either? i was seeing it as a comparison, and a criticism, almost as if to say \'who do they think they are, dressed up like that\'. but obviously it\'s hard to judge from just the one sentence.

Katherine Hodkinson
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:37
Native speaker of:

English

9 hrs confidence:

fop

Explanation:
fop isn't exclusive to the 50s by any stretch of the imagination, but seems a little more appropriate to the era than "dandy"

Tegan Raleigh
United States
Specializes in field
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 12

39 mins confidence:

greasers

Explanation:
See John Travolta, Happy Days etc.

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Note added at 17 hrs 5 mins (2004-09-06 06:50:57 GMT)
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Hebe suggests that this term is from the seventies. While George Lucas\' \"American Graffitti\" did appear in the 70s, it authoritatively documented the period in the mid-50s when Rock n Roll had just broken out, Jimmy Dean was big and hot rods were all of the talk. The young people into this scene were known as greasers.
--

Robert Schlarb
Local time: 13:37
Native speaker of:

English,

German

4 hrs confidence:

swells

Explanation:
"Swells" are not usually working-class as far as I know. So this would emphasise the contrast... I mean the fact that they're unusually well-groomed, spruced up.
Swell: a dandy, a fashionable or finely dressed person (Chambers dictionary).
A fashionable person, esp. one well-dressed and of dashing appearance and conduct (Merriam-Webster dictionary).
I think the word - dated now - was both British and American.

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Note added at 4 hrs 34 mins (2004-09-05 18:19:46 GMT)
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In another early triumph of marketing over poetry, it was entitled This Is Cinerama - the picture that so enthralled that audience of New York swells. ...
www.hollywoodtheatre.org/cinerama

and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis all make cameos before Page 7, along with a litany of big-time New York swells that only close readers of Vanity Fair will have ...
archive.salon.com/books/sneaks/1998/06/04sneaks.html

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Note added at 7 hrs 28 mins (2004-09-05 21:13:23 GMT)
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I\'m adding this because \"a couple of swells\" is the phrase which sounds right:

I enjoyed the description of his two little boys nonchalantly sucking their dummies,
\'looking like a couple of swells smoking cigars in a field on a hot day. ...
www.litrev.dircon.co.uk/199805/KELLAWAYONKUREISH.html

But also sort of relishing the brief, strange communication that was going down.
Me and Pal Rat hanging like a couple of swells on Franklin Street. ...
thebigpunch.net/BigPunch-FirstFive.pdf

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Note added at 8 hrs 54 mins (2004-09-05 22:39:36 GMT)
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Of the other versions, I think Jane\'s comes closest, but I\'m persuaded by Irving Berlin\'s song \"We\'re a Couple of Swells\" and all the associations of that phrase. \"A couple of swells\" is a perennial phrase that has lived on through the decades.
I like all that hepcat jive - are you hep to that jive? - but it risks being way out of context here.

Jane mentions gomina. This is not the place for a long discussion, but this is fascinating. Scope for a bit of inter-linguistic research. There was a whole era when gomena (originally gomina) was the Greek for girlfriend, and gomenos was boyfriend. The source of the word was Gomina, an Argentinian brand of hair cream - for that tango look! - which \"spread throughout Europe and Greece\" (as a certain dictionary puts it).

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Note added at 18 hrs 9 mins (2004-09-06 07:54:42 GMT)
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soignés was bothering me too. I think \"washed and combed and turned out like a couple of swells\" hangs together all right.

Dylan Edwards
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:37
Native speaker of:

English
PRO pts in category: 8

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gommeux

English translation: With the clean, well-combed and well-groomed look of two real slickers ready for double date

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gommeux

English translation: With the clean, well-combed and well-groomed look of two real slickers ready for double date

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