Ménage

Ménage, GILES, a French writer, born at Angers in 1613, gave up the bar for the church, but chiefly spent his time in literary pursuits. He founded, in opposition to the Academy, a salon, the Mercuriales, which gained him a European reputation, and the ridicule of Molière as Vadius in Femmes Savantes. His Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Française (1650; best ed. by Janlt, 2 vols. 1750), and his Origini della Lingua Italiana (1669), are erudite works, but contain many fanciful etymologies. He died in 1692. See Life by Baret (Paris, 1859).