avoir le cafard

Word by word

have · the · cockroach

Idiomatic sense

To feel low, flat, or blue. The mood can arrive on a Sunday evening or in a grey week, without a disaster to point at. It is ordinary unhappiness of that dull kind, not a diagnosis.

Cafard is also the insect. In this phrase it is the mood. One has it the way one has a condition.

Examples

1. Depuis lundi, j'ai le cafard.

   I've been down since Monday.

2. Le dimanche soir, ça me donne le cafard.

   Sunday evenings get me a bit low.

Equivalents

Marks say how far the other phrase travels with this one. How to read them.

1. near

   English

   to have the blues

   The same dull low mood. English names a color. French names the insect.

2. near

   German

   Trübsal blasen

   To sit in gloom and nurse it. A little more active than simply having the cafard, and the same neighborhood of feeling.

3. near

   Chinese

   闷闷不乐

   Low and shut in on oneself. A set phrase, less comic than the cockroach.

4. partial

   English

   under the weather

   Mildly unwell, or not quite right in the body. Avoir le cafard is the spirits. They overlap only when a speaker is being vague.

5. none

   Japanese

   気が滅入る

   A plain verb for the spirits sinking. It does the job in Japanese and it is not a figurative set phrase of this kind. No equivalent is claimed.

Notes

The phrase is informal and standard. It is not vulgar. It does not mean that one is afraid of insects, and it does not mean that one has a specific illness.

How the insect and the mood came to share a word is left alone here.

Sources

• Standard informal idiom. Wording is original. No etymology is asserted.

Mentioned from

• partial under the weather English