• Résumé

    Pronunciation

    • UK IPA: /ˈɹɛz.ÊŠËŒmeɪ/, /ˈɹɛz.uːˌmeɪ/
    • US IPA: /ˈɹɛz.É™.meɪ/

    Alternative forms

    Origin

    From French résumé, past participle of résumer ("to summarize"), from Latin resumere ("to take back"); compare resume.

    Full definition of résumé

    Noun

    résumé

    (plural résumés)
    1. A summary or synopsis. from 18th c.
    2. (chiefly North America, Australia) A curriculum vitae; an account of one’s employment history and qualifications (often for presentation to a potential future employer when applying for a job). from 20th c.

    Synonyms

    Usage notes

    In Canada, resumé is the sole spelling given by the Canadian Oxford Dictionary; résumé is the only spelling given by the Gage Canadian Dictionary (1997 edition).

    In the US, there are three major spellings of this word: résumé, resumé, and resume. All three are in common usage and all three are occasionally contested. The usual justification for each is usually as follows:

    resume is an acceptable spelling, because modern English does not usually have diacritic marks except when borrowing terms or as an optional spelling to indicate a breach of standard pronunciation rules. Compare cafe, emigre, nee, and fiance, all of which are commonly spelled with and without accent marks. The spelling resume is more likely to be found on the web due to the limits of ASCII character encoding and the US English keyboard.

    resumé follows a practice wherein a final e is accented to indicate that it is pronounced where it would usually remain silent. Compare touché, café, and especially saké and maté, where there is no etymological precedent for the accent. The acute accent over the first e, on the other hand, serves no function in English.

    résumé follows a practice of retaining accents in borrowed words, which some may consider affected. Compare protégé, émigré, née, and élan.

    Certain other French words with two accented e's have the same usage conflict, though the relative infrequency of the words in common usage causes the conflict to be less pronounced. Also, some spell-checking tools prescribe against resumé, suggesting résumé instead, which may affect the perception of the correctness of the two spellings of the term.

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