Category Archives: French

Similar to our ‘rosy’, ‘rose(s)’ is ‘pink’: Used humorously to describe a socialist ‘rose’ denotes a left-winger as ‘pink’; Toulouse is called ‘la ville rose’ because of the pink stone of which it is largely built. ‘Une rose’ is a … Continue reading →

For my friend’s week-old baby: ‘faire areu areu’ is ‘to gurgle’. A rattle is ‘un hochet’ and a stuffed bear is ‘un ours en peluche’. Happy days, happy life…tout le bonheur du monde.

Naming no names, but ‘to be a nit-picker’ is translated as ‘être très tatillon (a man) or tatillonne (a woman)’. And, in similar vein, ‘to split hairs’ is described as ‘chercher la petite bête’ : literally: ‘to search for the little … Continue reading →

‘Un octet’ is not a musical group with eight instruments (‘un octuor’) or a poem with eight lines (‘un huitain’) but ‘a byte’ in computer terms. One day I shall treat you to a whole section of computer words but, for … Continue reading →

‘La barbe !’ (‘the beard!’). This is usually said while stroking one’s chin (not sure if it works so well for women, though). It translates as ‘I’m bored’. I have realized only recently that this expression must have grown from meaning that … Continue reading →

False Friend alert…! From the context in which I was reading it yesterday, I could tell that ‘intimer’ does not mean ‘to intimate’. So back to the Roberts-Collins dictionary to see what it does mean: ‘to order, to summon, to … Continue reading →

Can you spot a mistake in the above book title: Un Américan tranquille ? When I first borrowed this novel by Graham Greene (‘A Quiet American’) from Portsmouth and Southsea library I had to go to my Collins-Robert dictionary to … Continue reading →