5 French Slang Expressions You'll Hear Every Day
There is a gap between the French you study and the French people speak, and slang is most of it. You do not have to use any of these — but if you cannot recognise them, half of every real conversation will slide past you. These five are the ones I hear most.
1. un truc — a thing / a thingy
The most useful word in casual French. It covers any object, idea or situation whose name you have forgotten — which, as a learner, is often.
- Passe-moi le truc, là. — Pass me the thingy.
- J'ai un truc à te dire. — I've got something to tell you.
- C'est un truc de fou. — That's insane.
Verb form: bidouiller is to fiddle with something; machin is its close cousin for objects and people whose name escapes you.
2. ouf — crazy
Ouf is fou (crazy) with the syllables flipped. C'est ouf ! — "that's crazy", usually admiring or astonished rather than negative.
Careful: it is unrelated to the English "oof". And in the fixed phrase pousser un ouf de soulagement, it is a different word entirely — a sigh of relief.
3. chelou — shady, dodgy
Chelou is louche reversed, and means something is off:
- Il est un peu chelou, ce mec. — That guy's a bit dodgy.
- C'était une soirée chelou. — It was a weird evening.
It implies suspicion, not just strangeness — bizarre is the neutral word for merely odd.
4. bosser — to work
The everyday replacement for travailler. Completely normal among friends and colleagues, out of place in a cover letter.
- Je bosse demain. — I'm working tomorrow.
- Il bosse dans une banque. — He works at a bank.
Related: un boulot — a job. J'ai trouvé un boulot.
5. la galère — a nightmare / a hassle
Originally a galley ship — the rowing kind. Now it means any exhausting ordeal:
- Quelle galère ! — What a nightmare!
- C'est la galère pour trouver un appart à Paris. — Finding a flat in Paris is a nightmare.
- Je galère avec le subjonctif. — I'm struggling with the subjunctive. (a verb too)
The verlan trick
Two of the five above are verlan — a slang system that reverses a word's syllables. The name is itself l'envers ("backwards") reversed. Once you spot the pattern, a whole layer of French opens up:
- fou → ouf (crazy)
- louche → chelou (shady)
- femme → meuf (woman)
- lourd → relou (annoying)
- énervé → vénère (angry)
- arabe → beur
You do not need to produce verlan. You do need to recognise it, or films and songs stay opaque.
Use it, or just understand it?
My honest advice: understand all of it, produce the mild end. Bosser, un truc and la galère are safe in any informal setting. Ouf and chelou sound better once your accent has settled. And none of it belongs in an exam essay — see formal vs informal French for where the lines are.
Practise this on your own
Reading about French slang is the easy half — you only own it once you've produced it yourself. On parisly.app you can work through this material at your own pace — reading, listening, writing and speaking practice with feedback, so the vocabulary in this lesson turns into French you can actually use.
More of the same: French slang for "awesome", angry French expressions, and casual French reactions. To hear this register used properly, try Family Business — it is wall-to-wall slang.