Discover the French idiom "Tourne la page"

We are going to show you all the things you ever wanted to know about the basic French idiom “Tourne la page”.

More precisely, this includes a detailed guide of what it is and how you can use it in a dialogue with an audio example. Not to mention the cool informations we added like slow pronunciation audio, synonym, dialogue example and more!

Oh and if you want, you will find our others idioms tutorials on this page and the ultimate list of all our French words guides on this page. C’est parti ! (Let’s go!)

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Translation in English

How to pronounce it?

Slow pronunciation

Normal pronunciation

What does tourne la page mean?

Definition

The literal meaning is:

  • Tourne → Turn
  • La → The
  • Page → Page

This is a sentence French people are using as an advice to someone for moving on to something else.

To be more precise, it’s encouraging someone to forgive or stop thinking about a tough situation like a breakup, divorce, failure, etc. But you can also use it more casually after a misunderstanding to ask someone to forget about what just happened.

How to use

Scenario 1: your best friend went through a breakup and he/she is still suffering from it, you can advise him/her for example: “Tourne la page, c’est du passé” (Move on, it’s the past)

Scenario 2: you made a funny mistake while talking. Everybody laughed, then the conversation moved to another topic. But someone is still making fun of it and it annoys you, use for example: “C’est bon, tourne la page, on a compris” (Ok we got it, move on).

In both scenarios, just using “Tourne la page” without anything else is fine too.

Synonyms

  • Tournez la page. (“Turn the page“)(Formal)
  • Passe à autre chose. (“Move on“)
  • Passez à autre chose. (“Move on“)(Formal)

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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Parler de son ex
Talking about your ex
___
Claude:   C’est qui ce gars à qui tu parlais ?
Who is this guy you were talking to?
Léa:   C’est mon ex petit ami. Il travaille dans ce restaurant maintenant.
He’s my ex-boyfriend. He works in this restaurant now.
Claude:   Et vous avez parlé de quoi ?
And what did you talk about?
Léa:   Il m’a dit qu’il m’aime encore.
He told me he still loves me.
Claude:   Wow… Et tu as dit quoi ?
Wow… And what did you say?
Léa:   Que je l’aime aussi et que je n’arrive pas à tourner la page.
That I love him too and that I just can’t move on.
Claude:   Sérieusement ?!
Seriously?!
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