Or-Durves

Why the heck do we use that phrase, hors-d'oeuvres? It's really hard. Every time I have to write it I have to look it up - and I actually know French.

Isn't there some other word we could call those things? Snacks? Sounds too "after-school". Appetizers? But that implies that more food is coming later, and usually if you invite someone for hors d'oeuvres you're not feeding them anything more.

What does that even mean? I think oeuvre is like a work of art. (I vaguely remember some pretentious use of this term to describe the entire body of work of a film creator, but film criticism has always had these French land mines like auteur and mise-en-scene.) Hors doesn't mean what it sounds like, it means outside.

So hors d'oeuvres are outside art. Does that mean they suck?

Seriously. It's just un-called-for.