I was crocheting a with a friend recently and she asked what i was working on. "A filet sweater!" i said. she paused. "Do you mean... fillet?"
while the image of a sweater made of fillet is funny (although maybe a bit "done already"), it got me thinking. are the words actually related? or is it just one of those english things where two words look and sound the same but have opposite meanings and origins from opposite sides of the globe?
turns out--they ARE related! the common root word is "fil"--the french word for thread. filet is the diminutive version, so "little thread".
it's pretty easy to track down how "filet" relates to fillets--they are thin strips of fish! even the red meat filet makes sense, since you're supposed to tie it with a string to cook it. OK, french people.
sorry for the weird image pull. Was trying to find cartoon pics of what i was talking about because meat is gross, but turns out if you google "filet tied up cartoon" you get a bunch of deviantart fetish drawings. so i wasn't keen on that.
the crochet link is a little harder to find however, because that term doesn't seem to have been a traditional technique name. the technique I'm calling "filet" was called "square lace" up until around 1912, so it seems like the name probably came from a more pop-culture-y origin rather than an old french or english root word. i think it's easy to assume, "oh duh it's from the french word for string! crochet uses string!" but then why wouldnt EVERYTHING be filet?
after a bit more digging, i found that filet was also the french word for net, and that's why it's called that. because it looks like a net! which in hindsight is super simple and i probably would have found that out a lot faster if i had focused more on just other words that came from "fil" instead of specifically trying to track down the origins of the name of the technique. there are just SO many words that came from fil, and like half of them are also "filet" and they all mean different things. french seems bad. I'm glad we're still allowed to make fun of them without it being considered bullying because they kinda deserve it.