That is to say, "'Caution' isn't 'cochon' (but it might be 'con')."
Your "caution" is the security deposit you pay before renting an apartment. It's rather huge here in Paris, and in addition to paying that, you have to pay your first rent and typically also the equivalent as a fee to whatever rental agency you had to go through to get the place, which is why it can be "con", a multipurpose swear word that can mean something like "idiot" or "idiotic" or "seriously annoying" (kind of like saying some turn of events is "a bitch", perhaps a bit stronger), or it can mean "damned" as in "that damned gerbil!", or it can mean "cunt", in which case it's (obviously) pretty offensive. A "cochon" is a pig. In French, "caution" and "cochon" are pronounced similarly (the former with a bit more of an "s" sound and the latter with an "sh"), and in my head I'd been spelling the former a lot like the latter. When I thought about it a bit, though, it didn't make a lot of sense to have to give your landlord/lady a pig before moving into one of his/her properties.
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2 comments:
I would love to give a pig as a down deposit! Or, I would, at least once, just for the ability to say that I had.
I think I agree. After the first time, it might get a little repetitive, and people would probably start to question why I (or we) had such an unusual interest in pigs, pigs which so quickly disappeared after being in our presence.
Ahem. Or maybe not. But it would be fun to do. And we do know the French are weird. Maybe we could get away with it sometime.
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