fondling the collections

as an archivist in the united states, i deal with collections of materials. i use the word "collection" all the time. about a billion times a day. if i worked in canada, say, or the UK or France, or pretty much any other place... i would use the word fonds instead.

Fonds.

i hate that word. it looks like it should mean another word for someone's private parts. it gives me the heebie-jeebies to see it on paper. and even worse, most American archivists pronounce it just like it looks - "fon(d)z." it just sounds like a dirty, leering word.

it's a french word, so it should be pronounced something like "fahn" or "fawn." archivists in canada/france/UK/etc. use it to mean a body of work created by someone and kept in its natural, meaningful order. or something along those lines. (this is where i should do some fact-checking, but i am too lazy and will therefore rely on knowledge gained in grad school... but that was 3 years ago.) even in the US, if i recall my SAA glossary of terminology correctly, archivists claim that "fonds" is the correct word, and that "collection" implies something false or not genuine. a collection meaning a bunch of stuff not naturally accumulated but instead "collected" on purpose and with a false/unnatural order. but we all say "collection" anyway. maybe i'm not the only one skeeved out by the word after all.

i won't even go into the phrase "respect des fonds."

sounds like something a mangy-looking prostitute would yell at someone on the street: "Respect des fonds, bitch!"