SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French word of the day: Saison blanche

Even beginners know that blanc/blanche means white, but the word has a lot more meaning than a literal description of colour.

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

Why do I need to know blanc?

Because when certain items have 'white' added to them, it gives them a whole new meaning.

What does it mean?

When the French government announced that ski resorts were looking at a saison blanche (white season) they were not talking about the weather reports looking particularly promising for snow.

Here, blanche meant 'write-off'. Ski resorts might not get to reopen at all this year, the government said.

Une saison blanche is a season that is void or a write-off.

And a season is not the only thing you can make white in French.

Nuit blanche (white night) means a night of no sleep (and is also the name of a very popular cultural all-night festival in Paris).

Une année blanche (a white year) is a term used about a specific tax mechanism that occurred in 2019 to prevent tax payers from being charged double on their income tax. This is a complicated one, but the only thing you need to understand for the purpose of this article is that, again, blanc referred to the fact that 2019 was 'tax free'.

Une année blanche can also mean 'a gap year', a year of pause to think or plan a project before embarking on a university degree, a new job or starting a company.

Use it like this

Elle a pris une année blanche pour voyager. – She took a gap year to travel.

Une saison blanche sera très dûre pour le secteur de sport d'hiver. – A write-off of the season will be very tough for the winter sport sector.

J'ai fait une nuit blanche pour finir cet article, je suis crevé. – I stayed up all night to finish this article, I'm dead.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
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.

SHOW COMMENTS