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FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French Word of the Day: Bouffer

This French verb will come in handy before a hearty meal.

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

Why do I need to know bouffer?

Because you do this a few times a day, and you might hear your French friends use it when making evening plans.

What does it mean?

Bouffer – roughly pronounced boo-fay – is the slang version of manger (to eat).

La bouffe is a very colloquial way of saying nourriture (food). Bouffer is the verb version, so you could say j’ai bouffé to tell someone that you ate something.

While it does generally mean to eat, bouffer has kind of a greedy clang to it. French people often use it to express that they overate – in English you might say you had ‘scoffed’ ‘filled your face’ or ‘chowed’ 

Bouffer is also popularly used in the expression se faire bouffer, which best can be translated to ‘be walked all over’. Sport fans often use it to describe a big win or loss, or to show off and play tough before a game.

Bouffer is quite colloquial, and some might even see it as vulgar, so you probably wouldn’t use it in a fancy restaurant or if you’re meeting your French in-laws for a meal.

Bouffer also gives us the root for the French term for junk food – malbouffe (literally ‘bad food’).

Use it like this

Tu bouffes trop vite, tu vas t’étouffer si tu ne t’arrêtes pas de temps en temps – You’re eating too quickly, you’re going to choke if you don’t stop to chew occasionally.

J’ai craqué ce week-end, je suis allé bouffer un énorme Big Mac – I couldn’t resist, I pigged out this weekend and ate a huge Big Mac

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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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