The French sentence "Tu me cours sur le haricot" explained

Ready to discover all the things you ever wanted to know about the basic French idiom “Tu me cours sur le haricot”?

To be more specific, it includes a detailed definition of what it is and how you can use it in a conversation with an audio example. But wait, we also added some super useful stuff like dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio, synonym and more!

If you want, you will also find our others idioms guides on this page and all our pages about French words on this page. Enjoy!

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Translation in English

Audio pronunciation

Slow pronunciation

Normal pronunciation

What does it mean exactly?

Definition

This expression, born at the end of the 19th century, means that someone annoys us a lot. “To run someone” already meant in the 16th century “to annoy someone“. As for the “bean“, it corresponded, in slang, to a “toe“.

So, it literally means “You are running on my bean (toe)” but means “You annoy me.

How to use it

Every time someone annoys you with their behavior, their words or even just their presence you can say: “Tu me cours sur le haricot“. For a more complete sentence, you can add before “Arrête !” (Stop!) or “Ça suffit !” (That’s enough!)

This is not something very nice to say, but it’s actually one of the nicest ways to express this feeling in French. The softest would be “Tu m’embêtes” (You annoy me).

But as you probably guessed, you should be careful with this one anyway and avoid using it in a formal situation, at work for example.

Synonyms

Example in a story with translation

Now, let’s see a complete example of this idiom in a story with slow French audio and the English translation below.
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La salle de jeux
The games room
___
Un jour, Emily et Philippe allèrent dans une salle de jeux.
One day, Emily and Philippe went to a games room.
Dans cette salle, ils pouvaient jouer à beaucoup de jeux :
In this room, they could play a lot of games:
Billard, bowling, fléchettes, baby-foot, machines à sous, etc.
Pool, bowling, darts, foosball, slot machines, etc.
Ils commencèrent par le billard. Philippe gagna.
They began with pool. Philippe won.
Ensuite, les fléchettes. Philippe gagna aussi.
Then, darts. Philippe also won.
Puis le baby-foot, Philippe gagna encore.
Then foosball, Philippe won again.
Peu importe le jeu… Philippe jouait à la perfection…
Regardless of the game… Philippe was playing perfectly…
Ensuite, ils décidèrent de jouer au bowling.
Then, they decided to play bowling.
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