Q: "bourgeois epitan costume"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 10/4/2011 1:30 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson"<Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Q: "bourgeois epitan costume"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Another bit from "The Adventure of the Three Gables" DVD.  Holmes and
> Langdale Pike are viewing a costumed revel (seems a mixture of
> Restoration and Elizabethan styles) at the estate of "the young Duke
> of Lomond" (as Doyle writes), Isadora Klein's current conquest.  Pike
> says he and Holmes are "above bourgeois epitan costume".  (My hearing
> and the subtitle agree.  Not in Doyle.)  "Epitan" is pronounced as I
> might imagine it in French, with a distinct nasalized AN.
>
> I don't find "epitan" in on-line French dictionaries, nor the phrase
> "bourgeois epitan costume" in Google.  What may it mean?  Or is it
> another subtitling error?
--

Maybe "épatant", as in this transcrpt:

http://www.livedash.com/transcript/the_memoirs_of_sherlock_holmes-%28the_three_gables%29/1020/KTEH/Saturday_August_28_2010/425239/

-- Doug Wilson

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