Fairy Tales

Cinderella is called Cendrillon in French. As the story goes, little Miss Cinderella wore herself a slipper en vair. En, in this particular case, means - roughly - "made out of," and vair is an outdated word which means - more or less - "fur." The more people heard this legendary tale, and the more the word vair worked its way out of everyday French, people began hearing vair as its homonym - verre - which means, indeed, "glass." By the time someone got around to the English translation, Cinderella was most certainly wearing a glass slipper to the ball, whereas it had originally been rather furry.