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FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French Word of the Day: Verbaliser

This French word usually has little to do with turning a noun into a verb.

French Word of the Day: Verbaliser
Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

Why do I need to know verbaliser?

Because if you find yourself interacting with a French police officer, this word would be important to know.

What does it mean?
 
Verbaliser – roughly pronounced vehr-bah-lee-zay – might look like an easy word to translate into English, but most of the time it actually means that you’re being given a fine or other penalty.

So if you’re driving over the speed limit for example, not wearing a seatbelt or cycling with earphones in or other low-level offences you might get pulled over and the police officer would record your offence or give you a fine. In this case, you would find yourself being ‘verbalisé’ by the officer.

This term often comes up whenever the French government is considering instituting a new fine or penalty.

Though less common, verbaliser can be used in other contexts aside from interacting with law enforcement. Just like it is in English, it can also mean “to verbalise” your thoughts rather than think them or write them down.

If you are looking for a synonym for verbaliser, you might say pénaliser, sanctionner, condemner, or payer une amende (to pay a fine).

Use it like this

Je suis passée au feu rouge, l’agent me verbalise. – I went through a red light and the police officer gave me a fine.

La Ville peut verbaliser les infractions au code de la route grâce à la vidéo protection. – The city can sanction road traffic offences thanks to video surveillance footage.

Member comments

  1. Did I read paragraph eight correctly?
    Surely that is one of those French driving myths.
    Why would driving without a shirt on be illegal? I quite often drive, in the summer, in just a vest. Does that mean I’m breaking the law?

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For members

FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French Expression of the Day: Caillou dans la chaussure

This one might come in handy when you’re complaining about French bureaucracy.

French Expression of the Day: Caillou dans la chaussure

Why do I need to know Caillou dans la chaussure?

Because, sometimes, you just need to tell someone about your frustration with life’s little, annoying, metaphorically painful niggles.

What does it mean?

Caillou dans la chaussure – roughly pronounced kay-oo don la shass-your – translates as ‘stone in the shoe’, is a phrase as old as time, and means exactly what it says.

You can use this in a literal sense, for example if you’re hiking and get gravel in your boots, but it’s more usually used as a metaphor.

When someone says they have a pebble in their shoe, it means that something is not right – and it describes the metaphorical feeling of something troublesome that is more painful than it really needs to be and is creating bigger problems than its size would suggest.

You can use it about your own problems, and it’s also used to describe something that is a big problem for someone else – in English you might say something is the ‘millstone around their neck’ to describe a big, weighty problem that won’t go away.

Use it like this

Nouvelle-Calédonie : le gros caillou dans la chaussure de Macron – New Caledonia is the millstone around Macron’s neck

Nous connaissons tous cette sensation désagréable d’avoir un caillou coincé dans notre chaussure – We all know that unpleasant feeling of having a stone stuck in our shoe.

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