In an article from the Journal de Montréal called “Pas les moyens de rêver” (3 November 2013), journalist Richard Martineau used three French expressions that borrow a word from English:
1. gérer la shop
2. ça manque de punch
3. passer la moppe
Before the election had come to an end yesterday, Martineau argued in his article that Montréal doesn’t need an ambitious mayor with big projects in mind.
He said that Montréal needs a realistic mayor, someone who can clean up city hall and who knows how to gérer la shop, or “run the place,” like candidate Marcel Côté. The “shop” he was referring to is in fact city hall, l’hôtel de ville.
Martineau admitted that some people probably found Côté’s electoral platform to be lacklustre, ça manque de punch, but that it was also a realistic and prudent one.
Before even thinking about big projects, he said that Montréal needs someone like Marcel Côté to come in and passer la moppe et l’aspirateur dans tous les coins de l’hôtel de ville, or “mop and vacuum every corner of city hall.”
gérer la shop
to run the place
ça manque de punch
it lacks punch
it’s dull
passer la moppe
to mop up
The word shop is feminine: la shop. You may hear this word used to refer to a workshop, for example. But Martineau gave the expression gérer la shop a figurative meaning here. He wasn’t talking about a workshop; he was referring to city hall. We can probably translate the expression here as “to run the place.”
If it’s dull, if it’s got no punch, ça manque de punch. Anything boring could be described this way. A boring idea? A bland dish of food? Ça manque de punch!
The expression passer la moppe was also used figuratively here. Martineau didn’t mean that somebody needs to clean up city hall with a mop and water. He meant that someone needs to put things in order. That said, you can also hear passer la moppe used literally in the sense of washing a floor with a mop and water. When used, moppe is feminine: la moppe.
With a couple of good examples, this article brings to mind the question of how words borrowed from another language get assigned a male or female article in French.
My understanding is that it usually based on what article is used with the most common French version of the word. Is that right?
So initially I was doubting myself as to why “shop” in French would be feminine, since magasin is masculine. But then remembered that its use of shop comes from an industrial context, like a “shop floor” in labour terms. So in that sense usine is feminin so maybe that’s why shop is?
In that sense, I’m thinking moppe (ie, “mop”) is feminin because words like serpillière and guenille are?
My guess is that shop and moppe became feminine words because of the way they sound.
Would you agree that the oppe ending has a feminine-gender sound to it?
There’s also the word chope which sounds like shop and is feminine.