Mean, median, and à la mode

I was thinking about statistics and the most typical number in a set, the mode. The silliest of the averages. Why is it called that? As an enjoyer of words, my mind scanned for etymological connections and found one in the culinary realm. I was thinking while hungry.

À la mode is what Americans say when ordering a slice of pie with ice cream. To a French speaker, the phrase simply means “in the current style” or “fashionable” and is therefore used every day.

• un concept très à la mode = a very trendy concept

• les chaussures à la mode = shoes that are in fashion

As an American who did not study French, I get a mental picture of two dress shoes on a plate with scoops of melting vanilla ice cream. It’s a moving picture. The ice cream drips down the rich brown leather. The toes fidget inside the shoes. The diners look at each other.

In French, as in so many beautiful languages, there are masculine and feminine words. Sometimes the gender of a word is counterintuitive, as in la moustache. French actually has two words spelled mode with different meaning and genders. The genders in this case are what I think many people would guess: la mode (society, feminine) and le mode (statistics, masculine).

In both English and French, these senses of mode spring from the same Latin root, modus, meaning a way of doing something or the typical form of something. In keeping with the mode, I’ll end on a helpful note: to order pie à la mode in France, say, “Je voudrais une tarte avec une boule de glace, s’il vous plaît.”