Solifeur & Solifleur, Entymology?

"Solifeur" & "Solifleur" (Both spellings).
Nicely exotic sounding words that are liberally bandied
about, mainly in auction descriptions, to make people
sound knowlegeable and important.

However there are no entries for either word in:
Oxford dictionary
Cassels French dictionary
or Wikipedia.

Some people seem to use it in a description of eg.
A (bud) vase, for a single flower. Solitary flower?

Do these words really exist?

no

Yes, of course they exist. Cos people use them!
Indeed, when they are given in a description, most people interested in the subject would roughly know what it means. Language -thank heavens- is a dynamic living thing, not always captured in books.
Okay, its a poncy, fanciful non-word made up by toffee nosed auctioneers. But....if it is used,then it is a word!

dantheman wrote:no

Hmmmm so not in the CYED either?

Not in my 1983 edition of Chambers Twentieth Century either.

denbydump wrote:

dantheman wrote:no

Hmmmm so not in the CYED either?

not in a dictionary or used enough to get into one, there are Klingon words that are used 10 times as much

dantheman wrote:
not in a dictionary or used enough to get into one, there are Klingon words that are used 10 times as much

Amd I bet some are in the latest dictionary!

philpot wrote:Yes, of course they exist.  Cos people use them!
Indeed, when they are given in a description, most people interested in the subject would roughly know what it means.

I didn't know what it meant, that's why I looked it up, only to find neither word exists.

soliflore in french

Soliflore (single flower) is a perfumiers' term for a single-note floral fragrance, so it would be interesting to see how it is (mis)used in auction catalogues and the like. Is there a common factor to the items described as such, maybe they're all decorated with a single flower?
My other guesses based on the spellings in denbydump's initial question are that in both cases 'sol' is the Sun, from the Greek and the root of the French 'soliel', with 'feur' in the first word a pretentious representation of 'fire', so a rough translation would be 'sunfire', so possibly a reference to an item's colour, similar to singe de boeuf.
The second version could simply be somebody's guess at translating 'sunflower' into French and making a bad job of it. Again, possibly a reference to colour.

Ha Ha. Singe de boeuf would translate as "Monkey of Beef"
I think you mean sang de boeuf - Oxblood.
French for sunflower is tournesol.

If one looks on EB there are many glass items that would hold a single flower,
rather than decorated with one, described as Solifleur.

I knew that 'singe' looked wrong as I typed it, but my French is barely better than Del Trotter's. As he would say, "Bouillabaisse, mon ami".

So now 'bud vase', 'specimen vase' or 'stem vase' are considered too common for the pretentious, even though they cannot even spell their chosen alternative. Typical. Next up, a moon flask will be a 'bouteille de la lune', although they'll be spelling it 'bootay dela loon'.

Grumpy Grandad wrote:So now 'bud vase', 'specimen vase' or 'stem vase' are considered too common for the pretentious, even though they cannot even spell their chosen alternative.

My point exactly GG. People just copy and paste away, having no idea or analysis of what they are using, and it just becomes
ubiquitous by default...

Now on to the others, taken from the pretetious expert's pocket lexicon.

"Crackleure" Every art "expert's" go to word. Not in my dictionary??

"Necessaire" Ok it's French, A Tim W favourite, Not in my dictionary??

"Etui" French, strangely is in the dictionary...

Any more?

craquelure in french

Ok, so I guess it's just a French word with no direct English equivalent.