I slap my balls against it!

January 23, 2003 1:36 PM

The English have landed! In the spirit of international confederation, Nerve.com offers this all too brief list of common curses, epithets, and scandalous phrases, along with their French counterpart, and more interestingly, a transliteration of the French so one can better understand the Idiom.
posted by jonson (15 comments total)

I'm guessing since this is on Nerve.com, it's NSFW.
posted by hyperizer at 1:57 PM on January 23, 2003

Well... there are no gratuitous images on the page, but yes, the words are questionable.
posted by jonson at 2:10 PM on January 23, 2003

hopefully they were sans parachutes.
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:24 PM on January 23, 2003

...this from the people who also bring us the phrase la petite mort - the French do have a way with their euphemisms.
posted by madamjujujive at 3:13 PM on January 23, 2003

Seeing as I had a French ex-girlfriend, I can actually say something about this.

Referring to menstruation as "the English have landed" -- the full version of that is les Anglais sanglants: the bloody English. Hence the euphemism. Sort of like Australian humour.

Faire la pipe ("doing the pipe") is another BJ equivalent.

Be careful when using the word foufoune, as it has more than one meaning: "pussy" in France, but "buttocks" in Quebec (hence the Montréal nightclub Foufounes électriques). The equivalent of the flipped meaning of "fanny" in British English vs. American English.
posted by mcwetboy at 3:15 PM on January 23, 2003

Even better, mcwetboy, is gosses. In France it's a nice slang for "kids" while in Quebec it refers to the scrotum.

You don't want to praise your hosts' gosses in Montreal.
posted by ?! at 3:52 PM on January 23, 2003

Nice list, though (as you say) all too short. One pedantic caution: I don't know the last one (gode 'dildo') and it's not in any of my dictionaries (as far as I know, the word for 'dildo' is godemiché), but it certainly doesn't mean 'God'—that's just their little joke. It's derived from the verb goder 'have a hard-on' (goder pour 'to be hot for': Il gode pour une petite Alfa rouge 'He really wants a little red Alfa Romeo').
posted by languagehat at 3:54 PM on January 23, 2003

Oh, and on the topic of different meanings in different places: coger, which in the rest of the Spanish-speaking world is the usual word for 'take,' in the region of Buenos Aires is the usual word for 'fuck.' Much hilarity ensues!
posted by languagehat at 3:55 PM on January 23, 2003

While you might look at 'carving a pipe' to be a funny idiom for 'giving a blowjob'.. just look at 'giving a blowjob' literally and you realise how stupid our idiom is. You're not 'giving' anything, you're not 'blowing', and it's not really a 'job'. If the logical people had their way it'd be called a 'penis-suck'.

This isn't rude, but my favorite French idiom at the moment is "j'perds le nord". I could only translate it as 'I lost the North', but eventually found out it just means you've 'lost your bearings' (literally or emotionally).

There's a list of about 100 such French idioms here.

(BTW, I can't see why 'uncircumcised' takes an idiom in France, since the majority of French men are uncircumcised, and it's no minority thing like in the US.)
posted by wackybrit at 3:57 PM on January 23, 2003

I had an old co-worker for whom English was a second language, and one day, when he came in I was feeling depressed about God knows what, and he said "What is ze matter? You 'av lost your funny."

Sometimes the direct idiomatic translation is so much more apt than whatever phrase the mother tongue would offer.
posted by jonson at 4:05 PM on January 23, 2003

hmmmm , miss juju.......................
posted by sgt.serenity at 6:31 PM on January 23, 2003

One tampon if by land, two if by sea...
posted by alumshubby at 7:44 PM on January 23, 2003

I had no idea the French used "foufoune" to mean "plotte", which they call "chatte", of course. Thanks for enlightening me, mcwetboy.

You don't want to praise your hosts' gosses in Montreal.

Depends on what part of town you're in."gosse" is a great one, it's true. Each normally constituted guy has two of them, so "scrotum" is not the exact translation...

One fundamental difference between the French and the Québécois is the dominant flavour of cuss words. The French take their inspiration in sex, whereas the Québécois take it in religion. "Putain de bordel de merde!" vs "Hostie de calice de tabernacle!"

Also, "double entendre" makes no sense in French. But you knew that.
posted by qbert72 at 9:44 PM on January 23, 2003

Alright, having reviewed this discussion, I must share the following with my fellow MeFites: I once (don't ask me how, I won't tell) encountered the French expression "baiser en cygne". I won't trouble you all with the literal meaning of this, but the figurative is to make love to a women whilst she has her ankles around your ears. I thought it was fantastic that the French had a specific tourne-a-phrase for this. We anglophiles have so much to learn.
posted by psmealey at 1:28 AM on January 24, 2003

It's not surprising that so many people are pointing out differences between French as spoken in France, and French as spoken in Quebec. The same is true of English. For instance, rubber, fanny, fag, pants. I'm sure there are many more I can't think of right now.
posted by salmacis at 1:30 AM on January 24, 2003