Can you use the French “sans” meaning “without” in a formal English essay or is it coloquial?
Using a foreign word is not colloquial, but it is often placed in quotation marks, or in italics, to signal that you know it is a word not normally used in English. I’m struggling to think of a situation in which it sans would be the appropriate word to use in a formal essay, however. Maybe if you were using a phrase, such as “sans culottes” (meaning the poor). Shakespeare used it famously in the phrase: sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything, but it is rarely used today, except as part of a French phrase, or perhaps in a rather joking literary way.
