/fɛʁ pɔʁte lə ʃapo/ lit. ‘to make someone wear the hat’
French idiom, familiar. To shift the blame onto someone else.
Draft Not yet checked by a native French speaker.
How do people use Faire porter le chapeau
?
Familiar and very common, at work, in politics, in crime novels. The person who gets the blame comes after à or as a pronoun: “il a fait porter le chapeau à son stagiaire”, “ne me fais pas porter le chapeau”. Without faire, “porter le chapeau” means taking the blame yourself, often for something you didn’t do.
Also said faire porter le chapeau à quelqu’un
Faire porter le chapeau
in real sentences
-
Ne me fais pas porter le chapeau.
Don’t blame me.
Tatoeba, sentence by gillux, translation by Spamster, CC BY 2.0 FR
-
Il a essayé de me faire porter le chapeau pour tout.
He tried to blame me for everything.
Tatoeba, sentence by lbdx, translation by Hybrid, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Faire porter le chapeau
come from?
French Wiktionary records “mettre un chapeau sur la tête de quelqu’un” from 1669, meaning to damage someone’s reputation, and “porter le chapeau” in today’s sense from 1928. Its explanation for the hat is a theory rather than a recorded fact: when only men wore hats and the man counted as head of the family, wearing the hat came to mean being the one responsible, like “porter la culotte” (wearing the trousers).
Mistakes learners make with Faire porter le chapeau
Leaving out faire. “Je porte le chapeau” means I’m the one being blamed; “je lui fais porter le chapeau” means I’m pinning it on him. Dropping one word flips who’s guilty.
Other French idioms like Faire porter le chapeau
Spot a mistake in Faire porter le chapeau
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.