More words you don’t learn in evening class

As I am pottering about, doing this and that, I often think of words that are unusual or odd in French, or difficult to translate … but, of course, as soon as I sit down to write, they just disappear out of my head !  These are the ones that have, against all odds, stayed in my poor old brain!

• je touche du bois. Literally “I touch some wood”: in French you use the pronoun (je) and the indefinite article (some). In English we just say “touch wood”.
• entre ici et ailleurs. Between here and elsewhere, or in the middle of nowhere. I have also heard “au milieu de nulle part”.  You can also say “un trou perdu“, a lost hole – a bit derogatory !
• a jeun (grave accent on the a): fasting. You need to be (if you are unlucky) a jeun for your blood test. I loathe being a jeun. I am way too greedy to be a jeun, and I have tried explaining this to doctors … it didn’t make a tickle of difference
• chatouiller – the verb to tickle.  Nothing to do with cats, but from the verb touiller (old fashioned) which means to shake or rummage or stir.
• faire un soin. The hairdresser may ask you if you’d like him/her to faire un soin, literally to do a care. By this s/he means use conditioner, little more.
• j’en suis malade. I am ill from it. When we say we are sick of something, it doesn’t mean quite the same thing. Although we do hear the Brits saying that something is making them ill, we really do mean it and it is not a phrase we hear often.  In French it is quite an ordinary thing to say.  Unless they are not feeling malade, of course … in which case they are:
• bien dans sa peau : comfortable in one’s own skin
• dans la mesure du possible. In the measure of the possible, ie if possible.  They also say si possible.  Unless it is impossible, bien sur.
• se vanter. To show off. From the Latin vanitas, vanity.
• a tatons (grave accent on the a). To advance carefully, to be cautious when looking for something.  I assume the origin comes from the verb tatonner which means to pat/feel around you to find something.
• une piqure. This is an injection or a sting. Ca me pique ! means it is stinging. It can also mean to spike : il a pique (accent) une crise – he went off the deep end/ he was furious
• une crise: a crisis. Je suis en crise: I am in a crisis, usually applicable to, say, a migraine attack. They do not, however, refer to (eg) an earthquake as une crise in the way we’d say crisis. They’d say catastrophe.

Ladies, please add to this list !