Are you ready to find out everything you need to know about the funny French expression "Il pleut comme vache qui pisse"? It includes a full explanation of what it mean and how you can use it in a casual conversation with an audio example. And because we want to help you on your learning journey, we also added useful stuff like synonyms, slow pronunciation audio, dialogue example and more!
Translation : It's raining a lot
Literal meaning : It's raining like a peeing cow
Register : Informal - Funny
Slow
Normal
IPA : / il plø kɔm vaʃ ki pis /
It literally means:
This expression dates from the second half of the 19th century. This is an image to say that it rains a lot since, indeed, when a cow urinates it drops a rather impressive quantity of liquid in the grass compared to a human.
But why a cow? There are bigger animals, no? Well, the choice seems to be based on the biggest animal a French peasant would see in everyday life back in time. Too bad they didn't have elephants.
Instead of saying "Il pleut beaucoup" (It's raining a lot) or using the expression "Il pleut des cordes" (It's raining ropes) you can use "Il pleut comme vache qui pisse" to make it funnier.
But beware, this is familiar and isn't appropriate for formal contexts, typically at work.
Associating animals with heavy rain seems to be a common theme in English too, there is a saying: "It's raining cats and dogs" when it's raining heavily.
Dialogue
Bordel ! Il pleut comme vache qui pisse !
Dammit, it's raining like a peeing cow!*
Oh non, ça fait chier !
Oh no, crap!
Learn French with Audio Stories
Learn French the easy way with our French - English
parallel texts with slow French audio
Start Learning 
