Panache
Noun.
1: an ornamental tuft (as of feathers) especially on a helmet.
2: dash or flamboyance in style and action: verve.
[Origin: Middle French pennache, from Old Italian pennacchio, from Late Latin pinnaculum small wing, related to pinnacle.]
(1553)
“Potential enemy?” Ponce de Leon made a face. “It lacks panache. I prefer to be called ‘rogue’ or ‘outlaw’.” – Unbound, Jim C. Hines.
BTW, in France a panache is a beer mixed with lemonade
Cool, I didn’t know that! Sounds rather awful.
That’s a common mix in Germany as well and pretty popular.
Here, if you mix it with lemonade it’s a “Radler” (biker), if you mix it with coke it’s a “Gespritztes” (injected one).
I’m not a beer drinker any more, but many people like those especially in summer as it really quenches your thirst without getting you insta-drunk.
Actually, the beer/lemonade mix is tasty. The Redhead enjoyed it. Known as Summer Shandy locally.
It’s called shandy in the UK too and is indeed very refreshing. It’s the kind of thing you order on arriving at a pub after a long walk on a hot day when you ran out of water way too soon and are parched. Drunk fast to rehydrate when a pint of beer drunk at that speed would immediately go to your head, followed by a pint of beer that you can then enjoy at a sensible pace.
I know the drink Panaché too and it is good and refreshing, but I wouldn’t describe it as beer mixed with lemonade, to me it is beer mixed with lemon-flavoured soda. It has to be a carbonated clear “lemonade”, something like Sprite for example. To me lemonade makes me first think of the home-made drink lemon juice + water + sugar, and I wouldn’t mix that with beer at all.
Nightjar I don’t know about elsewhere, but in the UK lemonade would usually be carbonated and clear and would certainly be that in a pub. The drink that requires dilution would be lemon squash. Thus when I say shandy/panache is made with lemonade I mean the same substance you are talking about as lemon-flavoured soda …
jazzlet,
Oh, ok, thanks. I figured something like that was going on, but I didn’t know lemonade in the UK meant the carbonated drink. I just checked the Wikipedia article on lemonade and it does seem that different English-speaking countries use the word to mean either the “clear” or “cloudy” drink. Not being a native speaker, I was confused.