January 12, 1998

restaurateur

I'm wondering about the word "restaurateur." Perhaps I am delusional, but I seem to remember this word being spelled "restauranteur" in the past, which also seems a more logical extension of "restaurant." What happened?

The word restaurateur is sometimes spelled "restauranteur," but this is an error. The word for the proprietor of a restaurant is correctly spelled restaurateur.

Both restaurant and restaurateur are borrowed from French. To greatly simplify the explanation, restaurateur is formed from the French equivalent of the English verb restore and the suffix -tor, which forms personal nouns from verbs (two examples are actor and orator). Restaurateur is an older word than restaurant.

The word restaurant, on the other hand, is formed from a present participle of the restore verb. One of the meanings the present participle can have is 'something that performs (the activity of the verb)', so deodorant, something that deodorizes, and restaurant, a place that restores.

In other words, both restaurant and restaurateur are based on the same verb, but they are not directly related; restaurateur is not formed from restaurant with a suffix added. Since the word restaurant is so much more common, its spelling tends to influence the spelling of restaurateur. The spelling restauranteur is fairly common, but it should be regarded as an error.