Photograph someone facing the light and they come out dark - mostly edge, their detail lost in the brightness behind. Painters and photographers call that 'contre-jour', French for 'against the light'. The word crossed from painting to photography without changing at all - photographers in the nineteenth century simply picked up a painter's term from the seventeenth and carried it across, which is why a 400-year-old art word now lives on camera settings.
The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short KS3/4 captions
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, dated where the record allows
The 1615 painting origin and the move into photography
The English-links section - 'counter', 'contrast', 'contradict' from the same 'contra'
The sources page
A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners, students of art and photography, anyone who likes word-building, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It's a good bridge word - a French term a learner may already have met in an art or photography lesson without knowing it was French.
It's a more specialist word than 'bonjour' or 'journee' - a learner meets it less often, and mainly in art and photography. That's part of its interest, but it isn't core everyday vocabulary, and the resource doesn't pretend otherwise.
Why this exists
A word made of two clear parts - 'against' and 'the light' - is easier to hold than a term learned as a lump. 'Contre-jour' is one where the picture is exact: once a learner sees the figure black against the bright window, the word explains itself, and the shared 'contra' opens a door onto 'contrast' and 'contradict' too.
Originally created for my dyslexic son.
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: its two light-family cousins here, 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Contre-jour', 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure' use the light-sense; the rest use the day-sense.
Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal', and (from the other half of this word) the 'contra' family. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.
Available now as a PDF download.
This PDF prints into two forms, and you choose which suits you.
The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a binder ring. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, and punch a hole in the top-left corner, then hold them together with one ring. The cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order. Once they're on the ring a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out - which is where a lot of the understanding happens. The deck is a bag or dinner-table object: something a child picks up and works through at the table, not a pencil-case card.
The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page. Print it and it's ready - no laminating, no cutting. It's the print-and-go form, for the fridge or the middle of a lesson, when you want the whole story in front of you at once. You assemble the deck yourself; there's no ready-made deck in the box. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring for the deck. Neither form is homework and neither is a test.
This is an educational support material. It isn't a diagnostic, assessment or therapeutic tool, and it doesn't replace specialist assessment or intervention. Outcomes vary by learner. It's built to be revisited over time rather than worked through in one go, and it isn't a complete teaching programme or a substitute for formal instruction.
Photograph someone facing the light and they come out dark - mostly edge, their detail lost in the brightness behind. Painters and photographers call that 'contre-jour', French for 'against the light'. The word crossed from painting to photography without changing at all - photographers in the nineteenth century simply picked up a painter's term from the seventeenth and carried it across, which is why a 400-year-old art word now lives on camera settings.
The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short KS3/4 captions
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, dated where the record allows
The 1615 painting origin and the move into photography
The English-links section - 'counter', 'contrast', 'contradict' from the same 'contra'
The sources page
A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners, students of art and photography, anyone who likes word-building, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It's a good bridge word - a French term a learner may already have met in an art or photography lesson without knowing it was French.
It's a more specialist word than 'bonjour' or 'journee' - a learner meets it less often, and mainly in art and photography. That's part of its interest, but it isn't core everyday vocabulary, and the resource doesn't pretend otherwise.
Why this exists
A word made of two clear parts - 'against' and 'the light' - is easier to hold than a term learned as a lump. 'Contre-jour' is one where the picture is exact: once a learner sees the figure black against the bright window, the word explains itself, and the shared 'contra' opens a door onto 'contrast' and 'contradict' too.
Originally created for my dyslexic son.
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: its two light-family cousins here, 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Contre-jour', 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure' use the light-sense; the rest use the day-sense.
Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal', and (from the other half of this word) the 'contra' family. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.
Available now as a PDF download.
This PDF prints into two forms, and you choose which suits you.
The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a binder ring. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, and punch a hole in the top-left corner, then hold them together with one ring. The cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order. Once they're on the ring a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out - which is where a lot of the understanding happens. The deck is a bag or dinner-table object: something a child picks up and works through at the table, not a pencil-case card.
The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page. Print it and it's ready - no laminating, no cutting. It's the print-and-go form, for the fridge or the middle of a lesson, when you want the whole story in front of you at once. You assemble the deck yourself; there's no ready-made deck in the box. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring for the deck. Neither form is homework and neither is a test.
This is an educational support material. It isn't a diagnostic, assessment or therapeutic tool, and it doesn't replace specialist assessment or intervention. Outcomes vary by learner. It's built to be revisited over time rather than worked through in one go, and it isn't a complete teaching programme or a substitute for formal instruction.
