24 idioms
French has been the language of the courts and the well-off here since the Burgundian dukes ran the Low Countries from Brussels in the 1400s, but most Walloons went on speaking Walloon until the early twentieth century. France annexed the region in 1795, and the new Belgian state of 1830 ran everything in French despite a Dutch-speaking majority. It was school, and the years after 1945, that finished Walloon off at home. What came through is a French with Walloon and Dutch fingerprints all over it. Belgians say septante and nonante, use savoir where France uses pouvoir (“je ne sais pas ouvrir la porte”), hand you things with a “s'il vous plaît”, and in Brussels drop in “une fois”, lifted from Dutch eens. The accent keeps vowels France has merged, so brin and brun still sound different, and wagon starts with a w. And non peut-être, below, means yes, obviously.
Belgium
“at 'pouf' (a word of uncertain origin)”
in a random, haphazard way
Belgian French for doing something with no method at all, whatever falls out however it falls. Answer an exam à pouf and you are guessing every line; plan a holiday à pouf and you have booked precisely nothing. Where 'pouf' itself comes from, nobody is sure.
Belgium
“to go to the mustard”
to get told off
In Belgian French this means getting a scolding or dressing down. It is easy to confuse it with the similar sounding idiom about mustard rising to your nose, which instead means losing your temper.
Belgium
“after me, the flies”
not caring what happens once you're gone
The Belgian twist on 'après moi le déluge', the standard-French shrug toward whatever happens once you're out the door. Why Belgian French swapped the flood for flies isn't recorded anywhere.
Belgium
Switzerland
Northern France
“to arrange the cans”
to sort out a dispute, acting as go-between
Used in Belgium, Switzerland and just over the French border to the north, this is what a mediator does: step between two sides who won't speak to each other and quietly patch things up. It carries a slightly makeshift, improvised feel, more a bit of string and tape than a formal settlement, which fits a word, bidon, that elsewhere in French slang means fake or cobbled together.
Belgium
“to have hard”
to be struggling, having a rough time
Belgian French does something standard French won't: bolt an adjective straight onto avoir and skip the usual avoir du mal or avoir des difficultés altogether. J'ai eu dur avec cet examen tells any Walloon or Brussels listener you had a rough time of it, no extra words required. It belongs to a small family of Belgian constructions built the same way, avoir facile, avoir difficile, avoir dur, all short-circuiting the standard grammar.
BelgiumFrance
“to have the melon”
to be insufferably full of yourself
Describes someone whose head has swollen with pride, usually after a bit of success has gone to it.
Belgium
“to have more easy”
to find something easier than someone else does
The mirror image of avoir dur: someone has it easier than the next person, thanks to circumstance rather than effort. It's one of a cluster of Belgian French phrases that bolt an adjective straight onto avoir instead of reaching for avoir de la facilité, and it turns up constantly in ordinary grumbling about who's got the better deal at work or school.
Belgium
“to have an egg to peel with someone”
to have a score to settle with someone
It means there's unfinished business between two people, some dispute or grievance still waiting to be sorted out.
Belgium
“to have a brick in one's stomach”
to long to own your own home
A very Belgian trait: an almost inborn drive to build or own a house of your own rather than rent one.
Belgium
“to beat the butter”
to fumble around without making progress
Belgian for flailing about and getting nowhere, like churning cream that never quite turns into butter.
Belgium
“green cabbage and cabbage green”
two things presented as different but actually the same
A Belgian way of saying it's much of a muchness. Just flipping the word order to show there's no real difference.
Belgium
“national drache (from an old word for threshing grain)”
the heavy rain that traditionally falls on Belgium's national day
The half-joking name Belgians give to the downpour that seems to arrive without fail every 21 July, right as the national day parade gets underway.
Belgium
“to be a bird for the cat”
to be an easy target
Said of anyone so defenceless that being pounced on is only a matter of time.
Belgium
“to make of one's nose”
to behave in a boastful, superior way
Belgian French borrowed this one directly from Dutch, where puffing yourself up is pictured as literally making something of your own nose.
Belgiumnorthern France
“it's falling one of those draches (comes from a Flemish word)”
it's pouring rain
This expression describes heavy rainfall or a downpour. 'Drache' is a typical Belgian word that has been added to major French dictionaries like Larousse and Robert.
Belgium
“to play a pig's foot”
to play a mean trick on someone
A Belgian way of saying someone has stabbed you in the back, often right before walking out the door.
Belgium
“the franc has fallen”
to finally understand something
Said the moment the penny drops and something finally clicks.
Belgium
“to bite on one's chewing tobacco”
to hold back a strong emotion
Used when someone grits their teeth and swallows their anger, sadness or impatience rather than showing it.
Belgium
“to not have all one's chips in the same bag”
to not be quite right in the head
A cheerful Belgian way of saying someone's a bit scatty or not firing on all cylinders.
Belgium
“no maybe”
a sarcastic way of saying yes
A Belgian classic, said with a wink. It means the exact opposite of what it appears to, an enthusiastic 'yes' dressed up as a hesitant 'no, maybe'.
Belgium
“waffle iron policy”
dividing public funds equally between two regions regardless of need
A waffle iron presses two identical halves at once, and Belgian public spending worked much the same way for decades. Money for a project in one language region had to be matched, franc for franc, with a comparable project in the other, whether or not the second project made much sense. It kept an uneasy peace between Flanders and Wallonia, at the cost of a lot of pointless spending.
BelgiumFranceSwitzerland
“round as a shovel's tail”
to be completely drunk
One of many French ways of saying someone's had far too much to drink, this one riffs on the rounded end of a garden shovel's handle.
Belgium
Canada
“to fall into the eye”
to strike someone as instantly likeable
The one who falls is the one being admired: you fall into someone's eye when they like what they see. Elsewhere in French, 'taper dans l'œil' does the same job.
BelgiumFranceSwitzerland
“dishcloth, rag, small carpet”
to have had far too much to drink
A line from a comedy sketch that caught on as slang for being thoroughly drunk.