Since there was no “Special Word of the day” in the past few days, which incited scores of our French Blog fans to feel already nostaligiques about it, here is rien que pour vous (only for you) a special édition of the “Word of the Day”: It’s called -yes, you’ve guessed it- “Le mot *spécial* du jour” (“The *Special Word of the Day*)

And le mot spécial du jour is “FIGURER“!

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“Faire bonne figure” is a French expression that used to describe someone who maintains the appearance of being happy no matter what. Now it just means “to give a good impression”

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The verb figurer can come in many ways dans une phrase (in a sentence.)

Make sure you distinguish it from the other reflexive form, se figurer.

Figurer by itself, or “intransitively”, can mean “to represent”, or “to appear”.

For example, you can hear a telephone operator tell you: “Sorry, but the name you asked for ne figure pas sur l’annuaire téléphonique” (“does not appear on the phone book.”)

“Les Pages Jaunes” (“The Yellow Pages”) is the name of l’annuaire of France Télécom. You could make a special request, si vous ne souhaitez pas y figurer (if you don’t wish to be listed in it), and then they put you on a “liste rouge“, meaning a “red list” (From here you can easily deduce that the meaning of “being red-listed” in French is different from the English one, namely to be an “endangered species”!)

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Other instances can include:

* FIGURER PARMI:

The expression “figurer parmi…“, meaning “to be among…”. For example, you receive a phone call and an automatic voice yells at you : “Félicitations! Vous figurez parmi les gagnants d’aujourd’hui!” (“Congratulations! You’re among today’s winner!”) After which, of course, it will promptly urge you to disclose your credit card number, allegedly for the sole purpose of “claiming your valuable prize”… 🙂

* “FIGURE-TOI…” or the more formal “FIGUREZ-VOUS…”:

Here, we find again la forme réflexive of the verb figurer, namely “se figurer”, which was mentioned above.
So when someone says “figure-toi”, or more formally “figurez-vous”, that means something like “Well, actually…” It could also have the meaning of the English “Well, mind you…”, which reflects an unexpected negative reply to someone’s remark, mixed with a tiny bit of self-satisfaction.

Here’s an illustration:

– “Votre équipe de handball a du se prendre une raclée au tournois national, non?” (“Your handball team must have taken a beating at the national tournament, no?”)

– “Figure-toi cher ami que notre équipe a remporté le tournois!” (“Well, mind you, dear friend, our team has won the tournament!”)

(In which case an American would most likely follow up by throwing an “Oh snap!”)

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An important observation about “figurer” is that if it is conjugated and appears in a sentence or a text as “figure” (as in, say, “il figure” or “elle figure“), it could actually be mistaken for la forme nominale of figurer (though the context should tell you if it’s a verb or a noun); not to mention that “figure” is also un synonyme (a synonym) of the word visage (face.)

Dans une forme composée (In a compounded form), you can encounter it as:

– figure de style, which means “figure of speech”, or a “stylistic device.” For example, l’euphémisme is une figure de style which serves to attenuate the meaning of an unpleasing idea, as in “Andrée Chedid nous a quittés” (“Andree Chedid left us.”)

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* Et l’argot alors? (And how about French Slang?)

Finally, since you know now that “figure” is a synonym of “face”, you may want to know that this word can be used in l’argot, as in the threatening sentence: “arrête ou bien je te casse la figure !”, meaning “Stop it, or I’ll smash your face in!”

French slang synonyms of “figure” meant in the sense of “face” can be portrait, tête (literally “head”), or the pejorative words of tronche, gueule, poire, trogne—and even, be ready, the French word of “face“(So faites attention here!)