Another lexical creation in French, which Jean Véronis could have caught had he fished for neologisms in the RSS feeds of Libération: blog-bouler, adj. (and past participle) blog-boulé/e.
A junior high school girl has nearly been blog-boulée, i.e. “blog-balled”: expelled from her school for having slandered her maths teacher on her (less than one month old) blog. Unlike twelve of her fellow-students (according to Libé), she was let off with a suspended sanction, but her teacher has filed a complaint with the police (and her father is reported to have claimed to give her a thorough thrashing).
Not to go to deeply into the matter itself, I’m glad she got off (esp. since the reported insult is rather mild, in my book), and hope that the schools and teachers will get a handle on educating the kids about speech on the internet soon.
Blog-bouler is of course a blend of blog and blackbouler. The latter is a borrowing — half calque — from English blackball. Not a recent one by any means — TLFi has a citation of 1834 with the spelling blackbull (no relations to bulls, I’d think), and of 1837 with in the contemporary form.
(Explanation of the post title: avoir les boules, i.e. “have the balls”, is an idiom that means “be extremely angry”. Usually, a declaration that one a les boules is accompanied by a gesture, a movement of the open palm towards the front of one’s neck. Where the putative balls are supposedly situated.)
Related posts: Clouds of words, Les poteaux roses, c'est auripilant, Moins dérangeants politiquement pingouins, Amuse-bouche to zaibatsu, Finex ! Pooo !, Les rennes en rose, Murderous speech acts
Technorati (tags): école, blog, French, langue, langue française, lexique, néologismes, neologisms, school, vocabulary
Well, I would like to add that “avoir les boules” means as well be very disapointed, and/or very frustrated…it is not just anger…
Thanks for your very interesting blog I just discovered today!
I’m a French native living in Santa Cruz, CA.
You’re very welcome! Et aussi le bienvenu de commenter en français. Merci pour la précision — mes interlocuteurs ici emploient le mot aussi pour de la colère née de frustration.
Oh, entendu, alors, en Francais, dans le texte hehe…
Tes interlocuteurs ont sans doutes raison car nous, les Francais, atteignont assez rapidement ce qui ressemble a la colere…
Je pense que nous l’appelons la passion ou la determination mais cela ressemble bien a la colere parfois…
J’apprends ici a me contenir, et c’est tres interessant…
Bravo pour ton blog, tres interessant !
A tres bientot Chris !
La petite Francaise de Santa Cruz !
…Il me faut pratiquer mon Francais, je le perds, le mecanisme est enraye…c’est je pense la raison pour laquelle je me repette…
(interessant)…
Que vais-je devenir !!! hehe…
Je ne voudrais pas paraître triviale, ou alors je n’ai pas compris l’allusion très délicate de votre définition de “avoir les boules”. Mais il me semble que les boules en question sont les attributs sexuels masculin, qui remontent sous le menton sous le coup de la colère, ou plutôt de la déception à mon sens.