/avwaʁ lə kafaʁ/ lit. ‘have the cockroach’
French idiom, familiar. To feel low, gloomy or a bit depressed.
How do people use Avoir le cafard
?
Everyday, familiar French for a low mood that hangs around, often with no clear cause: Sunday evenings, grey weather, a breakup. Conjugate “avoir” as usual: “j’ai le cafard”, “elle avait le cafard”. You can also say something “me donne le cafard” (gives me the blues).
Also said j’ai l’cafard
Avoir le cafard
in real sentences
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J’ai toujours le cafard les lundis.
I always feel blue on Mondays.
Tatoeba, sentence by Sbgodin, translation by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Elle avait le cafard.
She was feeling down in the dumps.
Tatoeba, sentence by lbdx, translation by AutoBot, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Avoir le cafard
come from?
Le cafard is a cockroach, and the word has long meant a hypocrite too. English Wiktionary credits the gloomy sense to Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du mal”, but the line it quotes (“sous de spécieux prétextes de cafard”, printed in 1855) reads more like the old hypocrite sense, so that link is shaky. By 1927 the idiom was everyday French: Fréhel recorded a song called “J’ai l’cafard” that year. Why a cockroach should stand for gloom isn’t recorded, though a dark insect lurking in a corner is the usual guess.
Mistakes learners make with Avoir le cafard
Hearing “cafard” and thinking only of the insect. Out of context “le cafard est sur la table” is a cockroach, but “avoir le cafard” is always the mood, and nobody says “avoir un cafard” for it.
Other French idioms like Avoir le cafard
Spot a mistake in Avoir le cafard
?
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