Q: "bourgeois epitan costume"

[Laurence Horn]

That must be right, as a reference to the classic line of the decadents (Baudelaire? Rimbaud?) about how the goal of the (avant-garde) artist is "épater les bourgeois".  Do we have a first cite for that one?

LH

On Oct 5, 2011, at 1:38 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> 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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