rendezvous
- A prearranged meeting or meeting place between two or more people.
- As a verb, to meet at an agreed time and place.
In a sentence
- The spies arranged a rendezvous at a quiet café on the outskirts of the city.
- The two spacecraft were programmed to rendezvous in low Earth orbit before the crew transferred between them.
Usage note. Pronunciation trips people up: despite the French spelling '-ez' and '-ous', both endings are silent in the anglicized pronunciation, giving 'RON-day-voo'. The plural is also 'rendezvous' (unchanged), and the past tense verb is 'rendezvoused'.
Where it comes from
English rendezvous — “prearranged meeting” · entered English late 16th c.
Borrowed directly from French 'rendez-vous', meaning 'present yourselves', an imperative construction from 'rendre' (to render, to go) and 'vous' (you), entering English in the late 16th century. It was initially a military term for troops assembling at a fixed point. The French construction is a second-person plural imperative that essentially commands attendance (source: Oxford, Merriam-Webster).