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Flowery French Expression
| Meaning | he loves me, he loves me not |
| Literally | he likes me a little, a lot, he loves me passionately, madly, not at all |
| Register | normal |
| Pronunciation | |
| [eel meh moo(n) peu boh koo pah syo(n) nay ma(n) ah lah fuh lee pah du too] | |
| IPA | [il mɛ mœ̃ pø bo ku pa sjɔ̃ ne mã a la fɔ li pa dy tu] |
Usage notes: Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout is the French version of "he loves me, he loves me not." Clearly little kids in many countries try to determine their romantic fates by de-petaling flowers while reciting silly verses. Of course, in English, you can cheat by picking a flower with an odd number of petals, so that "he loves me" always wins, while in French, the winner among five possibilities is harder to predict, but the odds are much better.
Variation: Elle m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, à la folie, pas du tout – She loves me, she loves me not.
Related expression: effeuiller la marguerite – to play “he loves me, he loves me not”; literally, to pick the petals off the daisy
Grammar notes
- Why does the literal translation include both "like" and "love"? See lesson on aimer for details.
- M’ is the contracted form of the direct object pronoun me.
Related lessons
- Aimer conjugations
- "I love you" in French
- More French love language
- Un peu, beaucoup – adverbs of quantity
- Passionnément – adverb of manner
- (Pas) du tout
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There’s an interesting discussion of this in Debra Ollivier’s book “What French women know: About love, sex, and other matters of the heart and mind.” She uses it as an illustration of what she takes to be French women’s general comfort with lack of explicit definition, in relationships and otherwise.