Here a Tranche, There a Tranche, Everywhere a Tranche, Tranche!
Here a Tranche,
There a Tranche,
Everywhere a Tranche,
Tranche!
With the release of a certain bunch of documents, a 16th century word is suddenly ubiquitous.
Blame the Epstein files or even — gulp — newspaper reporters, but the word “tranche” seems to be having a big moment.
With roots in the Renaissance and a long history of use by economists, tranche has been given new prominence in recent weeks as writers and pundits seek to describe the some three million pages released by the Justice Department in relation to Jeffery Epstein, the deceased sex offender and financier.
In the month since the Jan. 30 release, there have been tranches heard on the radio, on television, online and in print. There have been descriptions of “massive” and “enormous” tranches, “giant” and “voluminous” tranches, and — conversely — “small” tranches inside big tranches. There have been “recent” tranches and “new” tranches and “possibly last” tranches. There have been Spanish-language tranches (“tramo,” roughly) and, of course, French tranches, a natural outgrowth of its ancestry as a French verb, trancher, meaning to slice.
In English, tranche has made the leap from verb to noun, and is generally defined as a portion of a larger whole.
Online metrics confirm a current tranche-aissance. Google analytic tools show that searches for the word have recently surged, and that they also spiked in February 2022, when the Biden administration imposed a “tranche of sanctions” on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. And, yes, The New York Times’s use of “tranche” has also been notable, with 2026’s use already on pace to surpass a recent high of 80 uses in 2022.
The focus on a single word used to describe the documents related to Mr. Epstein might seem inconsequential compared with his crimes and their impact. But it’s worth noting for its sudden ubiquity.
Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, said that the word’s current prominence was reflective of a phenomenon known as “lexical touch-off,” which she credited to the sociologist Harvey Sacks.
That theory holds that when people hear a word in a conversation — including an unusual or unexpected word — they then find themselves repeating it. Dr. Tannen also noted that tranche’s use may be fueled by “verbal inflation,” whereby the meaning of a word expands beyond its initial definition, often diluting its impact.