Yikes. I can be seen in the photo. > < Here's the line in case it can't be seen clearly~ "Enjoy any sliced cake or 3 petit desserts with your choice of coffee, tea or soft drink" Did anyone get it? It's the use of the word petit which got my attention. Sure, petit is a synonym of small but petit dessert? I wouldn't have thought of that. And for a moment I thought it read petite. I would tend to think of petite as being used to describe the small size of a woman. In fact, I went to check out the cafe's website online and it seems that they use petite to describe their desserts as well.
Sources such as the Merriam-Webster, OED and Wiktionary stated that petit was the masculine form of the French adjective for small while petite was the feminine version. So I guess they are interchangeable to some extent.
From the OED:
petit, adj. and n.
A. adj.
1. Of small size, small; little. Formerly also (occas.):
small in number, few; = PETTY adj. 3 (obs.).petite, adj. and n.
2. More generally: small, little.
I thought that this was interesting since I wouldn't exactly link petit as an adjective to desserts. But after checking out Google, it seems that petit is used rather often together with desserts, especially petite. There were things like petite cheesecakes and petite sweets.
I wonder if this could be part of the lexis of desserts, for example. Just a thought.
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