grisette

noun

gri·​sette gri-ˈzet 

plural grisettes

1

: a crisp often tart beer with a light body and a lower-than-average percent of alcohol

2

old-fashioned + literary

a

: a young French working-class woman

b

: a young French woman combining part-time sex work with some other occupation

Examples of grisette in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Anne Hathaway—who has played the doomed grisette and has the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to prove it—does not seem to care about any of this. —Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 18 Mar. 2024

Word History

Etymology

(sense 1) borrowed from regional French, from Walloon grisète, from gris "gray" + -ète, diminutive suffix; (sense 2) borrowed from French, from grisette "inexpensive gray woolen cloth often used for dresses," from gris "gray" (going back to Old French) + -ette -ette; such women presumably so called because they wore garments of this cloth — more at grizzle entry 1

Note: The motivation for the beer name is unclear, though guesses that gris alludes to dirty miners, the dresses of women serving the beer, or a kind of local stone are unlikely. Note that grisette was originally brewed solely in the town of Antoing in Hainaut. Charles Le Cocq, the author of Coup d'oeil sur la statistique commerciale de la ville de Tournay et de son arrondissement (Tournai, 1815), reports that it was already well-known and shipped outside the town at that time, before the large-scale industrialization of Belgium. The name grisette may belong with other color words applied to beers at the time ("bière brun," "bière rouge"), which allude to some characteristic of the beer itself or the brewing process. One observer referred to it as a kind of white beer: "La grisette, qui est une espèce de bière blanche, et que l'on boit beaucoup en été, à cause de sa qualité rafraichissante; peu de brasseurs connoissent la manière de la fabriquer." ("The grisette, which is a type of white beer, and of which much is drunk in the summer, due to its refreshing quality; few brewers know how it is made"; Jean-Baptiste Vrancken, Antwoord op Vraag 81/Réponse sur la Question proposée sous le n.o 81 par la Société de physique expérimentale de Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 1829), p. 194.)

First Known Use

1735, in the meaning defined at sense 1