blanc-bec
French
Etymology
From blanc + bec. Literally, “white mouth”, where bec (“beak”) informally means “mouth” (likewise in English slang, which see beak), either referring to the observation or belief that very young birds's beaks were white or referring to the area around the mouth of a White, beardless, young man, which has the white skin visible, not yet covered by a beard and mustache.
Pronunciation
Noun
blanc-bec m (plural blancs-becs)
- (colloquial, derogatory) greenhorn
- 1976, Serge Gainsbourg, “L’homme à tête de chou [The cabbage-headed man]”, in L’homme à tête de chou:
- J'étais fini, foutu, échec / Et mat aux yeux d’Marilou / Qui m’traitait comme un blanc-bec
- I was finished, screwed, checkmated / In the eyes of Marilou / Who treated me like a greenhorn
- 1992, Amélie Nothomb, Hygiène de l'assassin [Hygiene of the assassin]:
- Et moi, j'aurai été un écrivain de génie, universellement admiré, j'aurai reçu le prix Nobel de littérature, tout ça pour qu'un blanc-bec vienne me lanciner de questions quasi tautologiques, auxquelles le dernier des imbéciles fournirait une réponse identique à la mienne !
- And I would have been a genius writer, universally admired, I would have received the Nobel Prize for Literature, all that for a greenhorn to come and poke me with almost tautological questions, to which the last of the imbeciles would provide an answer identical to mine!
See also
Further reading
- “blanc-bec”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012