The Qui Vive
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About the name: Basicly, I was trying to come up with a name, and as I glanced over the arcives of Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day (www.m-w.com), I saw "qui vive," looked at the definition, and desided to use it. The word of the day entry is below:
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 2 is:
qui vive \kee-VEEV\ (noun)
: alert, lookout
Example sentence:
Marcy is an inveterate shopper who is always on the qui vive
for bargains.
Did you know?
When a sentinel guarding a French castle in days of yore
cried "Qui vive?" your life depended upon your answer (the
right one was usually something like "Long live the king!").
What the sentinel was asking was "Long live who?" but the act
of calling out apparently impressed English listeners more
than the meaning of the phrase, because when they adopted it
in the early 1700s they used "qui vive" in the sense "alert."
Nowadays, it is most often used in the phrase "on the qui
vive," meaning "on the lookout."
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If you have any suggestions, comments, information, something you want to see on the site, or a better name, please email me at quivive@eaglepoint.net
Sincerly,
the Editor