French Vocabulary Not Learned in School: Work and Status
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.
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| 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 Bibard
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 +