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Ready to discover all the things you ever wanted to know about the basic French expression “Appeler un chat un chat”?
To be more specific, it includes a complete definition of what it is and how to use it in a normal conversation with an audio example. But that’s not all, we also added some super useful stuff like dialogue example, literal meaning, slow pronunciation audio and more!
If you want, you will also find more of these expressions pages like this one on this page plus the ultimate directory of all our French words pages on this page. C’est parti ! (Let’s go!)
Slow pronunciation
Normal pronunciation
In French, “Appeler un chat un chat” (To call a cat a cat) is a way to say that we should call the things by their name.
It encourages us to stop trying to change the words and just frankly call things the way they really are.
Let’s say someone is talking about a cheating husband like: “You know, it was a difficult phase of his life, their couple was running through a tough phase, he wanted something new…“.
You might want to say: “Il faut appeler un chat un chat, il l’a trompée, c’est tout.” → “We must call a cat a cat, he cheated on her, that’s it.“
The less polite version being: “Stop your bullshit, he cheated on her, that’s it.“
“(Ne pas) tourner autour du pot.” → (To not) turn around the pot