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« Learn French vocab from a funny text message exchange (#817)
Drunk, crazy, flipped over… say it all using one verb in French (#819) »

3 ways you can use the French verb VIRER (#818)

11 June 2014 by OffQc

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.

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Posted in Entries #801-850 | Tagged Ah shit j'ai pogné le cancer, français québécois, Maude Schiltz, Québécois French, virer, virer au vert, virer à droite, virer à gauche, virer fou | 4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. on 11 June 2014 at 17:22 Benoît Melançon (@benoitmelancon)

    For more meanings of “virer”, on top of those, see my http://oreilletendue.com/2013/09/18/de-virer/


    • on 11 June 2014 at 23:07 OffQc

      Virer une brosse, virer sur le côté, virer sur le top… je vais devoir penser à mettre ces expressions sur le blogue.


  2. on 11 June 2014 at 17:54 Joao Paulo

    L’utilisation de le verb VIRER au Québec semble bcp l’utilisation de le verb VIRAR dans le Portugais du Brésil.


  3. on 11 June 2014 at 22:41 Jose Delacroix

    Similarly, in Mexico City’s slang, it is said Virar. C r a z y.



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