The other day I discovered that the French equivalent of April Showers is Les giboulées de mars, or ‘March showers’. April showers sound soft and light to me, whereas Les giboulées de mars sound unpleasantly wet.

April showers are showers, often heavy, that fall in Spring, especially in March and April, in the northern hemisphere, particularly in the UK and Ireland, and also in France. They occur when the jet stream starts to move north in early spring letting strong winds and rain, and sometimes sleet and snow, sweep in from the Atlantic [source].

The word giboulée /ʒi.bu.le/ means sudden, short shower often mixed with snow or sleet, or in French ‘Pluie soudaine et brève souvent mêlée de neige ou de grésil.‘ [source]. It’s etymology is uncertain and is possibly related to the Langue d’Oc words giboulado (shower), gibourna (to sizzle) and/or gibournado (shower) [source]. Another French word for shower is averse.

Here are a few interesting French expressions I discovered this week:

– le tapis roulant à bagages = luggage/baggage carousel, or literally a “rolling carpet for baggage” – shame it isn’t a tapis volant (flying carpet)!

What do you call the conveyer belt thing that where you (hope to) retrieve your bags after a flight?

– le/la bagagiste = baggage handler – sounds like someone who really doesn’t like baggage. Maybe the reason why the French bagagistes seem to be on strike so frequently is that they can only bring themselves to handle baggage for limited periods.

– la hantise de la page blanche = writer’s block, or literally “obsessive fear of the white/blank page” – a good way to describe the condition. L’hantise comes from hanter (to haunt), from the Old Norse heimta (to bring home). The haunted meaning possibly came from English during the 19th century period of Anglomania. or from the Norman words hanté (visited by ghosts, haunted) and hant (ghost) [source].

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block / fear of the blank page? If you do, how do you overcome it?

The other day I came across the expression to ginger up in an English-French dictionary (it’s secouer or animer in French). Examples given include:

– the ideal man to ginger up the chat show formula
– Attempts to ginger up the tennis club’s social nights proved unsuccessful.

The French word secouer is used in the context of ‘gingering up’ a person or organisation, while animer, which is related to animate, is used when gingering up involves making things more exciting. I can see how the application of real or metaphorical ginger might spice things up, but have never heard or seen the phrase ‘ginger up’ used in this context. Have you?

According to the Phrase Finder, to ginger up means to excite or enthuse, and an alternative version of the expression is ‘to get someone’s ginger up’. The former version was recorded by Francis Grose, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785): “To feague a horse, to put ginger up a horse’s fundament, to make him lively and carry his tail well.” It then appears again in 1895 in reference to baseball.

The latter version appears frist appears in print in 1843 in The Attaché by Thomas Haliburton, or Sam Slick in England: “Curb him [a horse], talk Yankee to him, and get his ginger up.”

I discovered yesterday that French equivalents of ‘to go shopping’ or ‘to do the shopping’ are faire des courses or faire les commissions, which also mean ‘to run errands’. These expressions were new to me because when in French I’ve either stayed with families or in hotels and have never had to do or talk about such activities.

According to Reverso (to go) shopping (for food/groceries) is (faire) les courses, but shopping as a leisure activity is le shopping. In English you might say, ‘I am doing the shopping’ = I am shopping for food/groceries, but ‘I love shopping’ might refer to the leisure aspect of the activity. Do you make this distinction?

Related expressions include:
– partir faire les magasins = to go on a shopping expedition/trip
– les courses alimentaires = food shopping
– liste des courses = shopping list
– achat en ligne = online shopping
– centre commercial = shopping arcade / precinct / centre / mall
– sac/panier à provisions = shopping bag/basket
– caddie (m) = shopping trolley / cart
– faire du lèche-vitrines = to go window shopping
– faire ses cadeaux de Noël = to do one’s Christmas shopping

One way to practise languages you’re learning is to use them to write shopping lists. I usually write mine in Welsh.

In French if you want to talk about movement in general you use bouger, but for moving house you use déménager. The other day a friend pointed out that the root of déménager is ménage (housework, housekeeping, household, married couple), as in ménage à trois, from the Old French manage, from manoir (manor, country house), from the Latin manere (manner, fashion, way).

Déménager can also mean to leave, get lost, clear out, to be crazy, and related words include:

– emménager = to move in (to a house)
– un deménageur = furniture mover
– un deménagement = removal, moving
– déménager à la cloche de bois = to sneak off in the middle of the night
– Ça déménage ! = It’s great/brilliant!

As well as déménager, there are a few other French words for movement:

– bouger, remuer = to move (general)
– évoluer = to move (events, politics)
– circuler = to move, circulate (traffic); move along (get out of the way)
– avancer = to move (vehicle), advance, move along/forward
– voyager = to move about (from place to place), travel
– se déplacer = to move about (in a room or house)
– s’éloigner, s’en aller = to move off
– se pousser = to move over

Sources: Reverso, french.about.com, Wiktionary