“The very march of the alphabet aided the Encyclopedia‘s belief in the ethical equivalence of manual work to supposedly higher pursuits. In French roi (king) lies near rôtisseur (a roaster of meats or fowl), just as in English ‘knit’ follows upon ‘king.’ As the historian Robert Darnton observes, the Encyclopedia seized on such couplings as more than happy accidents; these take the authority of a monarch down a peg by making it prosaic.”

(Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, p. 92.)