Tag Archives: french saying

You can smell the wood

Text: “​​ça sent le sapin”

Translation: You can smell the wood

Context:

K is a student studying fashion in Paris. He first heard this French idiom in a car with his Parisian girlfriend’s family. The girlfriend’s sister was coughing a lot, and the mother said this phrase in response. This saying is essentially a way of saying, in jest, that someone is close to death. The “wood” in question is a reference to the material of a cheap coffin. Therefore, saying that a person can smell the wood, means they are very close to being in a coffin. 

Analysis: 

This phrase reminds me of the similar saying “knocking on death’s door”. Joking about death, or discussing it in such a flippant manner is quite a common thing in most western cultures. Death, typically, is something that is feared in most western societies, likely because what happens after death is understood to be unknown and undiscoverable to the living. Thus this dark humor present in such a normalized phrase is a response to the inherent fear of death so many have within themselves. Dramatizing something as simple as a cough (or other situation in which this phrase arises) allows the folk engaging in this speech to exhibit some small amount of control over death; in taking the seriousness out of the topic, it removes some of the fear about it too.

French Dinner Expression

Nationality: French-Moroccan
Age: Early 50s
Occupation: Unknown
Residence: South Florida
Performance Date: March 16, 2019
Primary Language: English
Language: French

Context:

The informant – MZ – is a middle-aged woman originally from France, now living in South Florida. Growing up, her mother was French-Moroccan, and her father was Moroccan-Algerian. She is one of my mother’s close friends. The following is from a conversation in which I asked her to tell me about any French-Moroccan traditions she remembers growing up. Here, she tells me about a French saying/joke her grandmother used to say to her after MZ would ask her what’s for dinner.

 

Original text:

“Des briques soufflées à la sauce cailloux.”

 

Word for word translation:

Blown bricks with pebble sauce

 

MZ: Back in the old day, the way they would make roof tile is it would be baked in a big oven. So she used to say that she would make oven roof tile with a stone marinade for dinner. I used to hear that all the time, because there would be really nothing for dinner.

 

Analysis:

Though “Blown bricks with pebbles sauce” doesn’t sound entirely elegant, it seems like, in French, there is wordplay between the bricks, which are baked in ovens, and the food, which would be baked in the oven. The quote seems to be fairly similar to saying, “slim pickin’s,” in English, simply meaning that there is nothing to eat.