Clandestine Rendezvous
Finish the lyric:
You gon’ be here for a while? I’m gon’ go call my crew, you go call your crew
We can __________ at the bar around 2
Yeah, okay, not the most challenging of questions if you're of a certain age and culture, in this case mid-90s hip hop. But just in case that’s not you, the missing word is “rendezvous” and the lyric is from the song Big Poppa. The song dropped in June 1994 and made Biggie a household name damn near overnight. But we’re not here to talk about the tragically brief career of one Christopher Wallace, aka, the Notorious B.I.G.
Rather, we’re here because I was asked about the difference between “rendezvous” and “meet”, and, well, someone says “rendezvous” and my inner DJ goes straight for the late Biggie Smalls. Anyway, let’s talk about meet-cutes and rendezvous. First things first, the two words are just about perfect synonyms in their most common usages. In face, the first word listed as a synonym for the verb “to rendezvous” is “meet” in Merriam-Webster’s online thesaurus.
But that’s not the whole story. Look at the lyric again: Biggie isn’t hoping to have a meet-cute with the girls from the bar. He’s looking for something a little more intimate1. Compare the lyric with this scene from another mid-90s staple, the t.v. sitcom Frasier2:
Niles: Frasier. Unless my eyes deceive me, that's Dad sitting over
there.
Frasier: God, you're right. Gee, that's strange, he said he was going
over to Duke's to have a beer with a couple of the boys.
Niles: Well, that certainly isn't the boys. Seems we've caught him in
a clandestine rendezvous.“Rendezvous” has a definite flavor to it that “meet / meet up” lacks.
There are a few things at work here: one, French-derived phrases still contain a certain cache in English left over from the days when it was English's default elite foreign language3.
Two, “rendezvous” still has a formal cache as evidenced by its relationship to the phrasal verb “meet up.” Phrasal verbs, by definition, are idiomatic and therefore, casual or more informal English. One of the ways to check whether a verb is phrasal or prepositional is to see whether it can be replaced by a singular, usually multi-syllabic, verb, e.g. you can take out the low-rent verb “meet up” with the more high-class “rendezvous.”
Three, and most important, “rendezvous” has a slight schism between its semantic and pragmatic usages.
Semantically, i.e. the meaning of a word that everyone mostly agrees on and that is recorded in various dictionaries, “rendezvous” just means a place to meet or the act of meeting. It’s retained this function since it’s borrowing into English from French in the early 1600s. And if it’s no longer known as a place to muster the troops, it’s still a useful word for designating a meeting spot.
Pragmatically, however, it’s a little different, as evidenced by the Frasier boys spying on their father. Pragmatics are how we actually use the words we have; pragmatics is the meaning behind the meaning, the one conveyed with raised eyebrows and hushed voices and curt hand gestures.
In the scene above, when Niles says the words “clandestine rendezvous” he’s on verge of giggling, delighted that he’s caught his dad doing something outside the bounds of their normal father-son dynamic. And yet, his intonation is such that the words are given greater meaning; he’s not being sarcastic and yet the implication is that the fact that his father may be having a secret tryst absolutely delights him.
I would argue that the scene would be rendered quite different, tonally, if Niles said, “Seems we’ve caught him in a secret meeting.” It’s just not the same.
Because, while in our thesaurus, “meeting” is a first-level synonym with “rendezvous,” pragmatically, it’s a whole other thing and I know this because in 1994, Big Poppa blew all our minds with how casually and explicitly Biggie talked about sex.
In the song, Big's rapping about picking up girls in the club to hook up with. The entire song is drenched in sex (although with a. surprisingly detailed interlude for "T-bone steak, cheese eggs, and Welch's grape) so rendezvous carries that cache with it. He's not asking these girls to meet up with him and his crew, no he's asking them to rendezvous and the real request is hidden inside the phrasing.
Like, I'm a suburban kid from a small farming town, the music I heard growing up had a distinct twang; the music I found on my own went from rock to metal to punk. Lyrically, while there was plenty of romance mixed in with the (ever increasing) angst and sturm und drag, there was very little sex. Even the rap scene exploding into our lives via MTV and YO! MTV Raps brought a lot of battles and consciousness with a bit of flirtation. Even acts like 2 Live Crew that were explicitly dirty were almost comical in their descriptions. But in between the early to mid-90s things started to change. Digital Underground and NWA had explicit tracks on their records and things that had been explicit before, like 2 lIve Crew, started to seem funny in comparison to later acts more "real" lyrics.
But by the time Ready to Die came out in 1995, I was in college and going to dance clubs on a regular basis. The music was different, to say the least. Suddenly, it was imperative to be in the club, dancing and being scene and now acts like Missy Elliott, Buster Rhymes, and Li'l Kim had their place right alongside the more political and social conscious acts like Public Enemy. “Rendezvous4” meant something different, something secret, or at least on the down-low, not to bragged about but to be getting on with.
Now just to make sure all our caveats are caveated, “meet” can be just as laced with innuendo as “rendezvous,” but what can’t? No, semantically, “meet” is just a word to use when you come into contact with someone, usually for the first time.
The problem here, of course is that “meet” is an old word5 and therefore has acquired a ton of other meanings. It's a word that can be frustratingly vague. Look at the difference between "nice to meet you" and "nice to see you." Generally, the first phrase is for a first meeting, the second is for a repeat meeting. Not to mention, that in this particular case, “meet” and “see” can be synonyms but they can also have wildly different meanings. “Tom is meeting Sally” vs. “Tom is seeing Sally.” See how quickly the confusions pile up?
So, verdict: are “meet” and “rendezvous” synonymous? Yes, except for when they’re not, like in the back of the bar, early in the morning, in 1994.
Obviously, there’s some rhyme play at work here, too. That internal rhyme between ~vous and two is just <chef’s kiss>.
These days, French is more like English’s hot-mess of an older cousin - still hot but the crazy is getting harder to keep under wraps.
For what it's worth, rendezvous doesn't often land on lists of words ESL/EFL students need to know. On the other hand, it's in every spelling bee, ever just because of that silent z there in the middle. And, frankly, as a teacher, it's a really good example of patterns that can be useful for recognizing French-derived words. That ~vous just doesn't show up in English unless it's from French loanwords.
Well, so is “rendezvous,” but “rendezvous” is only an old word in French. It did not become accepted as a standard English word until the 1600s, when French was at its most elite status. “Meet,” on the other hand, goes all the way back to Proto-Germanic days.