OffQc | Québécois French Guide

Let’s look at these three usages of the verb virer:

• virer fou
  
• virer au vert
• virer à droite

In entry #808, we saw the expression virer fou/virer folle, or “to go crazy.” Virer means “to become” or “to turn” here.

Je vais virer fou.
Je vais virer folle.
I’m going to go crazy.

Today, here’s another example taken from Ah shit, j’ai pogné le cancer (tome 1), this one also using the verb virer:

virer au vert
to turn green

One of the side effects of Maude’s cancer treatment is that her feet swelled up while travelling by plane, big like the green Hulk’s feet. She writes:

Mes pieds sont devenus gros comme ceux de Hulk. Ouan, vraiment très, TRÈS gros, là! (Mais au lieu de virer au vert, ils sont devenus complètement blancs, avec les orteils rouges.)

My feet became huge like the Hulk’s. Yep, really, REALLY big! (But instead of turning green, they went completely white, and the toes went red.)

[Maude Schiltz, Ah shit, j’ai pogné le cancer (tome 1), Éditions de Mortagne, Boucherville (Québec), 2013, p. 346.]

The verb virer can also be used in the sense of making a turn at an intersection:

virer à droite
to turn right

Il est interdit de virer à droite au feu rouge.
Turning right on a red light is not permitted.

(In Montréal, that’s the truth.)

If you can say virer à droite, then you can also say virer à gauche.