To start your week, we’ve got another French word for you! In this edition of our blog, we’ve chosen the word fou.
You can hear how to pronounce it in the audio clip below:
We’d also recommend listening to its feminine form folle, which means the same but sounds very different:
The word fou comes up a lot in French, with numerous translations suited to all sorts of contexts, both formal and informal. At its core, the simplest English translation of fou is ‘crazy’. However, you can build upon and change this in many different ways, with further translations including ‘mad’, ‘fool(ish)’, ‘wild’, ‘insane’, ‘deranged’, ‘stray’, ‘tremendous’, ‘ridiculous’ and many more.
Most commonly used as an adjective, fou changes spelling depending on the noun that it’s describing. Its possible spellings include:
- Fou, masculine singular
- Folle, feminine singular
- Fol, its masculine singular form before a vowel and most words beginning with ‘h’
- Fous,masculine plural
- Folles, feminine plural
In French grammar, we call this the adjectival agreement. For more information, visit our Easy Learning French Grammar section on adjectives.
With so many options for translating and using this adjective, it’s time to delve into some examples:
Il est fou de se faire bronzer sans crème solaire. He’s mad to sunbathe without any suncream.
être fou de colère to be wild/crazy with anger
être fou de joie to be wild/crazy with joy
être fou de quelqu’un oude quelque chose to be crazy/mad about someone orsomething
Ma sœur est folle de magie. My sister is crazy about magic.
avoir une peur folle de quelque chose to have an intense/extreme fear of something
Je ne veux plus aller au concert, il y aura un monde fou ! I don’t want to go to the concert anymore, there will be a ridiculous amount of people!
une idée folle an absurd/stupid idea
coûter un prix fou to cost a ridiculous/outrageous price
l’amour fou deep/crazy love
C’est fou ! That’s amazing / outrageous / ridiculous! (in a positive sense, informal)
de fou amazing; so cool (informal)
C’est une voiture de fou ! It’s an amazing car !
In our introduction, we did mention that fou is most commonly an adjective. This is because it also functions as a noun. Again, you might use different spellings depending on who or what you’re talking about, but be aware that it’s certainly a pejorative when used to talk about a person:
fou(m) madman; fool/jester; bishop (in chess only); gannet (as in the species of bird)
folle (f) madwoman; crazy woman
un fou du volant a crazy/terrible driver
That’s all for this week. If you’re truly mad about French and keep coming back every week to improve your vocabulary, you’ll have a ridiculous amount of words under your belt soon!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
