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FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French word of the day: Dégage

Need to let someone know that they are not welcome and need to leave you alone immediately?

French word of the day: Dégage
Photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Nicolas Raymond

Why do I need to know dégage?

We hope you won’t need it much, but if you want to tell someone to get lost, this is a winner.

What does it mean?

Dégage means 'get lost'.

It can have other meanings depending on the context, however we’re talking specifically about the interjection version of the verb – dégage! – that French people use when they’re annoyed with someone and want them to leave.

It is a colloquial expression, and French people don’t say “tu pourrais dégager, s’il te plait ?” (just like British people don’t say “would you be so kind as to get lost, please?” Actually on second thoughts, maybe some do).

Mostly, it's used when someone is pretty serious about wanting another person to leave.

A teenage girl might use it to get her little brother out of the room:

Dégage, Paul! Laisse-moi tranquille! – Bugger off, Paul! Leave me alone!

An older woman might use it to chase away someone who is giving her unwanted attention on the street:

Dégage! Beat it!

Other ways of translating it are 'beat it', 'scram' and 'piss off'.

Synonyms

Being a rich language, French has many different ways of telling someone to bugger off (read them as though they were accompanied by an exclamation point):

Pars  – leave

Partez – leave (polite version, or if you're talking to several people)

Va te faire foutre – bugger off (very colloquial, foutre is a pretty harsh insult)

Allez vous faire foutre! (funnily enough, you can be polite while telling someone to se faire foutre)

Fous le camp – bugger off

Foutez le camp – bugger off (polite/all of you)

Tirez-vous – run/get lost

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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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