/puʁ de kakawɛt/ lit. ‘for peanuts’
French idiom, familiar. For a very small amount of money.
Draft Not yet checked by a native French speaker.
How do people use Pour des cacahuètes
?
Familiar French that mostly comes up when people complain about pay: “travailler pour des cacahuètes”, “être payé des cacahuètes”. It’s about money that’s too small to be fair, and French Wiktionary labels the “almost nothing” sense of cacahuètes as popular speech. When you talk about buying something cheaply, “pour une bouchée de pain” is just as common.
Also said payer des cacahuètes, pour des cacahouètes
Pour des cacahuètes
in real sentences
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Travailler pour des cacahuètes, c’est très bien.
Working for peanuts is all well and good.
Tatoeba, sentence by U2FS, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Lorsqu’on paie avec des cacahuètes, on obtient des singes.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Tatoeba, sentence by sacredceltic, translation by Chrikaru, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Pour des cacahuètes
come from?
This one is a borrowing. French Wiktionary says the “almost nothing” sense of cacahuète appeared in the 20th century as a calque of English “peanuts”, citing Françoise Guérard’s 2023 book of food expressions. That fits the second example below, which is a word-for-word French version of the English saying “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”.
Mistakes learners make with Pour des cacahuètes
Sounding the h, or reading “hu” the English way. The h in “cacahuètes” is silent and the word sounds like “ka-ka-wet” (French Wiktionary also accepts “ka-ka-uet”).
Other French idioms like Pour des cacahuètes
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?
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