"Pardon my French" or "Excuse my French" is a common English language phrase ostensibly disguising profanity as French. The phrase is uttered in an attempt to excuse the user of profanity or curses in the presence of those offended by it under the pretense of the words being part of a foreign language. Another interpretation is that the speaker is compelled to use the distasteful language and is apologizing to the audience for the necessity.

The phrase has found large use in broadcast television and family films where less offensive words are followed by "pardon my French" to emphasize their meaning without violating censorship or rating guidelines. A good example is in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Cameron calls Mr. Rooney and says, "Pardon my French, but you're an asshole." In another segment, Bueller says about Cameron "Excuse my french, but if we were to stick a lump of coal up Cameron's ass, we would have a diamond in two weeks."

Origins

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The French language is used in place of other foreign languages due to the English-speaking world's view of the French culture as sexually and verbally permissive. In the late 19th century, Anglo-Saxons blamed the French for anything that could be considered remotely dirty. The belief began in the mid 19th century that the French were sex-obsessed. "Pardon my French" started becoming common on both sides of the Atlantic around 1916, and might have stemmed from the World War I escapades of American and British soldiers.

Related expressions

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Several expressions in French attempt to link various practices perceived as unsavory to England, e.g., "l'éducation anglaise" (disciplining children by sexually-tinged spanking). Ironically, several expressions are used by both the English and the French to describe the same unacceptable habit, but attributing the habit to the other people : e.g., "taking French leave" (leaving a party or other gathering without taking polite leave of one's host) is referred to in French as "filer à l'anglaise" (literally, "leaving English-style"), while the (now somewhat archaic) expression "French letter" (referring to a condom) is rendered in French as "capote anglaise". During the 16th century in England, genital herpes was called the "French disease" and "French-sick" was a term for syphilis. These are also considered examples of Francophobia.

Profanity | Ethnic slurs