{"id":21834,"date":"2015-03-26T20:55:53","date_gmt":"2015-03-26T19:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=21834"},"modified":"2017-10-23T14:21:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T12:21:43","slug":"50-shades-of-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/50-shades-of-green\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Shades of Green in French"},"content":{"rendered":"

Le printemps <\/strong>(spring) has officially sprung —\u00a0 even if parts of the east coast in the USA still have a white blanket of snow. La nature<\/strong> et vos allergies sont revenues \u00e0 la vie <\/strong>(Nature and your allergies have come back to life). Flowers are blooming, bees are hard at work, and all that was brown has become green.<\/p>\n

Le vert <\/strong>(green) is often associated l’argent et les finances <\/strong>(money and finances), l’avidit\u00e9<\/strong> (greed), la jalousie<\/strong> (jealousy), l’ambition<\/strong> (ambition), la stabilit\u00e9<\/strong> (stability), and la renaissance <\/strong>(rebirth). Along with their many associations, colors play an important role in language. When you’re sad, you’re blue. You can be tickled pink. You can be in the red with the bank. If you’re scared, you’re yellow bellied. To celebrate the return of Spring, we’re going to focus on the use of vert<\/strong> in French. En plus, c’est ma couleur pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e <\/strong>(plus, it’s my favorite color).<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Noun<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let’s start with the word as a noun. Le vert<\/strong> means green, green light (in traffic), vegetation, and the countryside.<\/p>\n

As a proper noun, les Verts<\/strong> is referring to The Greens, a green-ecologist political group that dissolved in 2010.<\/p>\n

Have you ever had a penny that had a green spot on it? This is called le vert-de-gris<\/strong>, and it’s just a green tinge that forms on copper. The same thing can be found on The Statue of Liberty in New York.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Verb<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Vert” by itself isn’t a verb, but it’s used in some verbs.<\/p>\n

\u00catre au vert <\/strong>has 2 meanings. The first refers to being out in the country. The other is when you’re watching\u00a0your\u00a0diet. Both are referring to la verdure<\/strong> (the greenery) – either outside or on your plate.<\/p>\n

Se mettre au vert <\/strong>also has 2 meanings. The first is to go out into the countryside for a relaxing rest. The other meaning is less literal: it means to go on the run (from the police, for example).<\/p>\n

Mettre au vert\u00a0<\/strong>without the reflexive pronoun is often presented in the past tense:\u00a0mis au vert<\/strong> and means put out to pasture. The idea comes from the idea that once a horse is finished with a racing career, he’s put out to pasture (retired). This can be used for humans, though.<\/p>\n

Couper en vert\u00a0<\/strong>means to harvest a plant before it’s ready.<\/p>\n

En voir des vertes et des pas m\u00fbres <\/strong>is an expression that means someone has said something pretty spicy things to someone.<\/p>\n

\u00catre vert(e) de rage<\/strong> is used when you’re very, very mad. You can also simply just use vert<\/strong>. (Elle est verte!<\/strong>)\u00a0Think of The Incredible Hulk We say purple with rage in English.<\/p>\n

\u00catre vert(e) de peur <\/strong>means you are very scared. I think this is interesting because this idea is associated with yellow in English.<\/p>\n

\u00catre au temps de sa verte jeunesse <\/strong>and \u00eatre encore vert(e) <\/strong>both refer to being in the bloom of your youth.<\/p>\n

Donner le feu vert \u00e0 quelque chose\/quelqu’un <\/strong>means the same as it does in English: to give someone the green light to do something (to give permission)<\/p>\n

Prendre quelqu\u2019un sans vert<\/strong> means to catch somebody unaware.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Adjective<\/strong><\/p>\n

Le num\u00e9ro vert <\/strong>is a toll-free number. These are nice because in France if you need to call your internet provider, for example, you are charged by the minute.<\/p>\n

Th\u00e9 vert <\/strong>is the same in English: green tea.<\/p>\n

Un haricot vert <\/strong>is a green bean, un l\u00e9gume vert <\/strong>\u00a0refers to a green vegetable in general, un poivron vert <\/strong>is a green pepper, and un citron vert <\/strong>is a lime. Are you a successful gardener who can plant all these fruits and vegetables by yourself? You have la main verte <\/strong>(a green thumb). In France, you have the green hand, but in Canada, you have le pouce vert<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Despite the post’s title, I’m not going to give you 50 shades of green, but here are 19 different shades of green:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

vert pr\u00e9\/vert gazon<\/strong> – grass green
\nvert citron<\/strong> – lime green
\nvert pistache<\/strong> – pistachio
\nvert bouteille<\/strong> – refers to the color of a standard green bottle
\nvert mousse<\/strong> – moss green
\nvert c\u00e9ladon<\/strong> – celadon green
\nvert methe<\/strong> – mint green
\nvert \u00e9meraude<\/strong> – emerald
\nvert p\u00e2le<\/strong> – pale green
\nvert sapin<\/strong> – pine green
\nvert tr\u00e8fle<\/strong> – shamrock green
\nvert jade<\/strong> – jade
\nvert malachite<\/strong> – malachite green
\nvert printemps<\/strong> – spring green
\nvert sauge<\/strong> – sage green
\nvert chartreuse<\/strong> – chartreuse
\nvert d’eau<\/strong> – sea green
\nvert olive<\/strong> – olive green
\nvert caca d’oie<\/strong>\u00a0– this isn’t in the graphic because nobody wants to see this. It literally means “goose poop green,” and is used to describe a color between yellow and green.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Le printemps (spring) has officially sprung —\u00a0 even if parts of the east coast in the USA still have a white blanket of snow. La nature et vos allergies sont revenues \u00e0 la vie (Nature and your allergies have come back to life). Flowers are blooming, bees are hard at work, and all that was…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":21848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,1,13],"tags":[348558,348557],"class_list":["post-21834","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-uncategorized","category-vocabulary","tag-les-couleurs","tag-vert"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21834"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28702,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21834\/revisions\/28702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}