When The Spectator took the pulse of Paris in 1897, it reported: ‘Macabre pictures, Macabre poems, and Macabre music are all the fashion. We hear of cafés where the tables are shaped like coffins.’ Macabre was a new word in English, and this was its sole 1890s Spectator appearance.
Its connections are indicated by a phrase in a song by that uneven chansonnier Georges Brassens: croque-macchabée.
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