In theme with today’s word, I’ve trimmed the ‘gras’ off of the following story. Also, don’t miss the sound clip for gras & grasse at the end of this edition!

gras, grasse (grah, gras) adjective
1. fat, fatty  2. stout (person)  3. greasy (hair) 4. thick (soil)

Un jour par an, le Mardi gras par exemple, les hommes devraient retirer leur masque des autres jours. One day a year, on Fat Tuesday for example, people ought to take off their mask from the other days. –Claude Aveline

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A Day in a French Life…

At Super U the cashiers are wearing elaborate masks with shiny sequins and feathers, tall and short, black and fuchsia, orange, blue, green, and yellow… reminding me of Mardi gras or Fat Tuesday. As I pile chocolate-filled cookies, canned whipped cream, and small tubs of flan onto the conveyer belt, I think about how Mardi may be fat, but the French woman who just clipped past me to hang a left at the exotic foods aisle has legs as skinny as chopsticks.

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Listen to Max and Jackie pronounce the words ‘gras’ and ‘gras’: Download gras.wav

‘Grah’ on the tongue is fun to pronounce; gras on the hips is hard to renounce. Slim down with this Frenchman’s new book: http://montignac.notlong.com

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Terms & Expressions:
parler/rire gras = to speak/laugh coarsely
faire la grasse matinée = to sleep in
discuter le bout de gras = to chew the fat, to chat
la toux grasse = loose cough (as opposed to la toux sèche, dry cough)

More expressions this book: