French Swear Words – The Verb Foutre

I don’t mean to offend anybody, and I’m sorry to be using vulgar French swear words, but as a French learner, it is important that you understand these French slang expressions, and even more so the intent behind them. However, I would encourage you to stay away from them.

If French slang sounds natural from a French native, slang is always stronger and has a much bigger impact when it is used by a foreigner.

The French Verb Foutre: Conjugation

The French verb “foutre” is very common in French. It’s actually a very old verb, which nowadays mostly means “faire” or “mettre”… and other less attractive meanings!

It’s part of a zillion French expressions, all of them being more or less vulgar, definitely slang… It can be used as a swear word, a curse an insult as well.

1. Je fous
2. Tu fous
3. Il fout
4. Nous foutons
5. Vous foutez
6. Ils foutent

Passé Composé: j’ai foutu
Adjective: foutu/e/s
Noun: un fouteur, une fouteuse
Old French noun: le foutre = sperm

Most of the time, the verb “foutre” can be replaced by “ficher” to make is a bit more colloquial… Je m’en fiche = I don’t care.

17 French Swear Expressions With the French Verb Foutre

Here are a few uses of the verb “foutre”.

Notice “foutre” can be reflexive “se foutre” – and please forgive the vulgar expressions but all these are very common, and you will come across them in movies etc…

1. Elle ne fout rien de ses journées – she doesn’t do anything all day long

2. Cette fille est vraiment bien foutue – this girl has a really nice body

3. Il a laissé l’appartement en foutoir – he left the apartment in a total mess

4. Je m’en fous – I don’t give a shit

5. C’est le roi du je-m’en-foutisme – impossible to translate but literally, this means he is the king of the “I don’t give a shit” movement

6. On s’en fout comme de l’an quarante – another crazy idiom meaning “we don’t care”: literally, “we care as much about it as the year forty”.

7. J’en ai rien à foutre – I don’t give a rat’s ass

8. C’est foutu ! – it’s the end, it’s finished, it’s dead

9. Foutue bagnole ! fucking car!

10. Fous-moi la paix – let me be!

11. Je ne sais pas ce que j’ai foutu de mes clés – I don’t know what I did with my keys (foutre as faire)

12. Ils ont foutu le camp avec l’argent – they ran away with the money

13. Tu te fous de moi ? Tu te fous de ma gueule ? Are you joking? (at my expense) – Are you pulling my leg? – Are you kidding me?

14. Ce sont des fouteurs de merde – they are trouble makers

15. À la fin, il s’est foutu en l’air – in the end, he killed himself

16. Ce film m’a foutu les jetons (slang) / ce film m’a foutu les boules (vulgar) – this movie scared the shit out of me

17. Va te faire foutre – fuck off (much stronger in French – a real insult, never to be used lightly)