Witty French Puns to Take Your French to the Next Level
Want to understand French quirks and humour? Read this article about the best French calembours and get ready for some French wordplay!
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The BasicsWordplay on Proverbs“Quel est le Comble” Riddles – What’s the Last Straw for… ?Famous Authors Pun-Playing (Even if they Hate to Admit it)Punny French comediansPunny French NewsCalembours from French MusiciansConclusionAs Alfred Hitchcock once said, “puns are the highest form of literature”. In French, this witty play on words is called « calembour » and it takes a certain level of expertise in the language to be able to pull it off.
Calembours, or French puns, make use of homophony (words that sound the same) to inject humour into regular expressions or even famous sayings. Here in this article, let me show you the ropes on how French people do calembours.
Disclaimer: some of the French puns may be cheeky or full of dark humor. It’s the French way; you have been kindly warned!
The Basics
On the phone with a French person :
– Allô ? (Hello / À l’eau – “to the water”)
– Non, à l’huile ! (No, to the oil!)
Saying Goodbye :
– À demain ! (See you tomorrow! / À deux mains – using both hands)
– À deux pieds ! (Using both feet)
If you’re daydreaming, they might tell you :
“Tu rêves, Herbert ?” (Are you daydreaming, Herbert ? – réverbère /lamppost)
Wordplay on Proverbs
Les bons contes (zen) font les bonzes amis.
Good (zen) tales make monk friends.
The French expression : Les bons comptes font les bons amis sounds the same – the English equivalent is: “short reckonings make long friends”
Qui n’aime pas payer l’opticien ménage sa monture.
Who doesn’t like to pay the optician takes care of their frames.
The French expression is : Qui veut aller loin ménage sa monture – “he who wants to go far looks after his mount”, or slow and steady wins the race.
“Monture” can mean “steed” or the “frame” of a pair of glasses: hence the mention of the optician.
Si t’as pas d’bol, t’as pas d’riz.
If you don’t have a bowl/ If you’re unlucky, you don’t have rice.
The French slang expression “avoir du bol” means to be lucky.
Jeanne d’Arc, elle a frit, elle a tout compris.
Joan of Arc fried, she got it all.
It plays on an ad for the French telecom company Free: “Elle a Free, elle a tout compris”.
Marie-Antoinette à la fin de sa vie, n’avait plus trop la tête sur les épaules…
Marie-Antoinette, at the end of her life, didn’t have a good head on her shoulders…
The French expression “avoir la tête sur les épaules” means you’re a steady, reasonable person. A dark joke, since she was guillotined!
“Quel est le Comble” Riddles – What’s the Last Straw for… ?
Quel est le comble pour un jardinier ? Qu’on lui marche sur ses plates-bandes et qu’on lui coupe l’herbe sous le pied !
What’s the last straw for a gardener? Literally: to have someone walk on his flowerbeds and cut the grass from under his feet! In English idiom: to have someone step on his toes and pull the rug out from under him!
Quel est le comble pour un électricien ? Que l’ambiance soit électrique, que le courant ne passe plus, qu’il y ait besoin de faire toute la lumière sur son affaire parce qu’il semble qu’il ait les fils qui se touchent et qu’il ait plus d’un incident à son compteur.
What’s the last straw for an electrician ? Literally: to have a highly charged atmosphere, to have the current no longer flow (“bad chemistry” in English), to need to shed light on his case, since it seems his wires are touching each other (“he’s lost it” in English) and to have more than one incident on his (electrical) meter.
Famous Authors Pun-Playing (Even if they Hate to Admit it)
Victor Hugo
The very distinguished author of Les Misérables has one of his characters, the student Tholomyès, call the pun « la fiente de l’esprit qui vole » (the droppings of the mind in flight)… while making puns himself!
Here is a tour de force, an entirely rhyming couplet that would be impossible in any other language. It is often credited to Victor Hugo, but it is actually by Marc Monnier:
Gall, amant de la Reine, alla, tour magnanime,
Galamment de l’arène à la tour Magne à Nîmes.
Gall, the Queen’s lover, went, magnanimous tower,
Gallantly from the arena to the Magne tower in Nîmes.
Paul Valéry
The very high-brow poet as well, tells us that “Entre deux mots il faut choisir le moindre”. (“entre deux mots/maux”: choosing the lesser of two evils… or choosing the shortest of two words).
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille has been a joy for French pupils for centuries, thanks to that particular line : “Et le désir s’accroît quand l’effet se recule”… because of “ l’effet se” sounding like les fesses – buttocks in French ! Cheeky!
Marcel Proust
Proust has funny French puns in In Search of Lost Time too: even though the Narrator finds them stupid and Swann dislikes them, here they are !
- In English, we’d say “Speak of the devil, and here he is”, the equivalent in French is “Quand on parle du loup, on en voit la queue” – Speak of the wolf and see its tail. Well when her nephew Robert de Saint-Loup arrives while the conversation is about him, Oriane exclaims : “Quand on parle du Saint-Loup !”.
- Charlus wants to offer a superb castle to his sister, Mme de Marsantes, to “bother her” (or “taquiner” in French). Oriane, although she claims she hates puns, blurts out : “Taquin… taquin… Alors c’est Taquin le Superbe !” – referring to the 7th and last king of Ancient Rome.
- The princess of Parme is talking about a politician who keeps losing his elections and consoles himself by getting his wife pregnant – again. “Comment ? Cette pauvre madame de Montserfeuil est encore enceinte, s’écria la princesse.
Mais parfaitement, répondit la duchesse. C’est le seul arrondissement où le pauvre général n’a jamais échoué.” “Arrondissement” means an electoral district (as well as a Paris neighborhood), and a pregnant woman gets rounder and rounder (s’arrondir in French).
Punny French comedians
Of course comedians use puns in French. But some of them are calembours specialists, like Pierre Dac, Pierre Desproges, Coluche, Laurent Ruquier, Vincent Roca, Sol (a character by Marc Favreau), François Pérusse, or Raymond Devos and puns are a staple of the radio game show Les Grosses Têtes. Best of, anyone ?
- “Pour des parents, c’est plus facile d’élever la voix que d’élever ses enfants.” Sol
It’s easier for parents to raise their voice than to raise their kids.
- “Vous savez ce que c’est qu’un concours hippie ? C’est une course de cheveux !” Coluche
Do you know what a hippie contest is? It’s a hair race! The real expressions are concours hippique (horse show) and course de chevaux (horse race).
- “Qu’importe le flocon pourvu qu’on ait l’Everest !” Pierre Dac – From a quote by Alfred de Musset, “Qu’importe le flacon pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse !” Pleasure from any source is always welcome – and turned into a thought on snowflakes and Mount Everest
- “Kronenbourg à la poste, Chronopost à la bourre ” Anne Roumanoff
Kronenbourg is a beer brand, and Chronopost is a French express parcel service. À la bourre is a slang expression for being late.
- “J’adore être pris en flagrant délire.” Raymond Devos
I love being caught red-handed in a fit of delirium!
En flagrant délit – the real expression – means to be caught red-handed, in the act
- “C’est quand même bizarre que, quand les fonctionnaires sont en grève, on appelle ça une “journée d’action”! Anne Roumanoff – “It’s weird that when civil servants are on strike, you call that an “action day”!
Punny French News
Le Canard Enchaîné is a satirical newspaper that specializes in calembours in its headlines, particularly thanks to the late journalist Jean-Paul Grousset (1930–2014), who wrote many of them.
A few examples :
- Irlande : Un peu d’Eire, ça fait toujours Dublin ! – A bit of air always does you good (Eire sounds like air, and Dublin like du bien)
The expression in French is Un peu d’air, ça fait toujours du bien
- Chassez le naturiste, il revient au bungalow. – Drive away the nudists, they’ll come back to the bungalow.
From the expression “Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop” – “nature will out” (literally: chase nature away and it comes back at a gallop).
- After the nuclear accident in Fukushima in 2011, their title was : “Au Japon, la réalité dépasse la fission”. The French expression being “la réalité dépasse la fiction”.
- About the Greek economic crisis, “La Crise grecque ? Pas de quoi en faire une dra(ch)me !” The French expression being “pas de quoi en faire un drame” – no need for drama… (the drachma was Greece’s currency before the euro).
Calembours from French Musicians
French songwriters love wordplay too. Alain Bashung, Sttellla, Gérald Genty and Boby Lapointe are all experts in the French pun department:
“-On n’a qu’à l’appeler Thierry, dis je. Thierry, ça marche pour tous les sexes.
-Tiens ? s’étonna le docteur. Je ne savais pas qu’il y avait des filles qui s’appellent Thierry ! Je jubilais.
-Mais enfin docteur, tout le monde sait ça ! Et Neneh Thierry, qu’est-ce que vous en faites ? C’est pas une fille, sans doute?”
Sttellla (Jean-Luc Fonck)
“- Let’s just call her Thierry, I said. Thierry works for all sexes.
– Is that so ? The doctor was surprised. I was unaware that there were girls called Thierry !
I was thrilled.
– Come on, Doc, everybody knows that ! And Neneh Thierry, what do you make of her ? Isn’t she a girl ?”
Of course Thierry is a guy’s name in France, and Jean-Luc Fonck either alludes to Neneh Cherry (a Swedish-born singer) or even to the Egyptian queens Nefertiti/Nefertari.
“J’ai pris l’hiver en grippe”
Alain Bashung
I’ve taken a dislike to winter – “prendre quelqu’un en grippe” means to take a sudden dislike to someone, and “la grippe” is also the flu.
“SOS Amor – Tu m’as conquis j’t’adore”
Alain Bashung
“Tu m’as conquis, j’t’adore” (“you conquered me, I adore you”) sounds almost like conquistador.
“Quelle avanie !
Avanie et Framboise
Sont les mamelles du destin.” Boby Lapointe – sounds almost like « Vanille et Framboise », vanilla and raspberry.
“Mon père est marinier
Dans cette péniche
Ma mère dit la paix niche
Dans ce mari niais”
Boby Lapointe
My father is a bargeman / On this barge / My mother says peace nests / In this naive husband – the pun is that the two halves sound practically identical, like in the rhyming couplet above.
Conclusion
The range of calembours is almost endless. I’d recommend that you check out the other comedians and musicians I quoted in the article in order for you to look for the puns yourself.
To finish, look up a song by Boby Lapointe with the lyrics on screen, so that you can pause and check them as you listen to the puns, which are far funnier when heard out loud!
