Tête À Tête

vis à vis

is better than

tête à tête

-- We Italians find 'tete a tete' too effeminate (and sounding too much like the ruder, 'tit a tit') -- for we say 'testa' in Italian. The French swallows it -- the 's' and get 'tete' with the circumflex. My PhD dissertation has this in the headline, for it's all about the face to face.

---

On the other hand, where does the 'z' come in 'viz.'?

Wikipedia reads:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viz.

"Viz. is an abbreviation of videlicet."

Some abbreviation, I say. For it introduces an unabbreviated 'z' into the 'bargain':

The wiki explains:

The problem were the monks:

"Viz. is the medieval scribal abbreviation
for videlicet. It is the letters "v" and "i"
followed by the common medieval Latin
contraction for "et" and "-et", which was a
glyph, Ȝ, similar in appearance to the
numeral 3 or the Middle English
letter yogh (Ȝ) although it was not
related to either."

as my cousins. I call them cousins, but they are not related to either.

----

"According to Brewer, Dict. of Phrase and Fable, the same abbreviation mark was used for habet (habꝫ) and omnibus (omnibꝫ)."

which may explain a few things.

---

JONES:

"The point of separating semantics from pragmatics (terminologically) is that the terminology marks the distinction between this objective propositional use of language from the more diverse (and sometimes even more important) ways in which people may play with words. So how does this place me vis à vis Grice?"

I think it places you very well. Since it's too serious, I'll dedicate a special post to it.