French Vocabulary Not Learned in School: Work and Status

January 18, 2014
/ Advanced Level Advanced Vocabulary French vocabulary and expression Intermediate Level Intermediate Vocabulary
/ By Frederic
/ 3 COMMENTS

Reading time: 1 minute Difficulty: Intermediate-Advanced

Everyone’s gotta work to earn some dough, right?

That is, unless you’re the rolling-in-m0ney kind of filthy rich. Good for you then.

But for this list of vocabulary, we take a look at the words, phrases, and slang on everything job related. Because hey, earning some moolah will never go passé.

Plus, you’re sure to come across these vocabulary sooner or later, too.

No time to read the list yet?

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download pdf french work and status vocabulary [/thrive_2step]

Work and Jobs	Le travail
Work, the job	Le boulot
The workplace	La boite
To work	Bosser, boulonner
To work hard	Bucher
Hard-working	Bucheur, euse
Laziness	La cosse La flemme
Lazy	Flemmard,e
To be bone-idle	Avoir un poil dans la main
A failure	Un raté, une ratée
To exploit	Faire suer le burnous (suer = to perspire, le burnous = an Arabian robe-like garment; from the good old days of the Empire when one made the Arabs work like slaves)
To sack, to kick out	Vider (literally, empty out) Foutre à la porte
To have friends in the right places	Avoir du piston
String-pulling	Le piston
To pull strings on behalf of someone	Pistonner quelqu’un
To grease someone’s palm	Graisser la patte à quelqu’un
A bigwig	Une grosse légume Un gros bonnet Une huile
A cop, a policeman	Un flic Un poulet
The fuzz, the police	La flicaille
Down with the pigs!	Mort aux vaches!
A cop on two wheels	Une vache à roulettes
A member of the security/espionage services	Un barbouze
A bodyguard	Un gorille
A quack (a doctor)	Un toubib (docteur)
A teacher	Un prof
A chef	Un cuistot
A funeral parlour employee	Un croque-mort (croquer = to bite into, to much)
A priest in his cassock	Un corbeau (literally, a crow)
A politician	Un politicard
A lady lavatory attendant	Une dame-pipi
A cobbler	Un bouif
A painter (the artistic sort)	Un barbouilleur (barbouiller = to smear, to scrawl)
Third-rate paintings	Les croûtes (f)
A third-rate book, film or other work of art	Un navet
A paper-pusher (usually a bureaucrat)	Un rond-de-cuir
A soldier	Un troufion

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About the Author Frederic

Frederic Bibard is the founder of Talk in French, a company that helps french learners to practice and improve their french. Macaron addict. Jacques Audiard fan. You can contact him on Twitter and Google +

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