Exclamation vulgaire de colère, de surprise ou d'agacement.
A vulgar exclamation of anger, surprise or annoyance.
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See how the word “Putain” is used in sentences
Putain, j'ai raté mon train ! — Damn, I missed my train!
Ah putain, il pleut encore ce matin. — Oh damn, it's raining again this morning.
Elle a soupiré « putain » devant l'écran figé. — She sighed “damn” at the frozen screen.
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Download the app for free French vocabulary testThe most versatile swearword in French. Literally “whore”, but in the overwhelming majority of uses it is a pure exclamation: putain! — “damn!”, “bloody hell!”. Nothing of the meaning survives, only the feeling.
The force depends on geography. In the south of France it is almost punctuation, dropped into every other sentence; in Paris it is coarser. Before a noun it works like “bloody”: putain de bagnole. And the softened substitutes are built on the first syllable — punaise, purée — exactly as English turns shit into sugar.
merde shit
Also an exclamation, but weaker: merde fits where English says “damn”, putain where it says something stronger.
punaise bedbug — and “sugar”
A softened substitute built on the first syllable, the same trick as English shoot for shit.
pute whore
The short form, and this one keeps the literal meaning. As a bare exclamation it barely occurs.
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