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Get ready to learn all the things you need to know about the basic expression “Tous les 36 du mois”.
To be clear, it includes a complete guide of what it is and how to use it in everyday life with an audio example. And that’s not all, we also sprinkled useful things like synonym, dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio and more!
If you are interested, more of these expressions are available on this page and the directory of all our French words content on this page. C’est parti ! (Let’s go!)
Slow pronunciation
Normal pronunciation
The literal meaning is:
The French expression “Tous les 36 du mois” or “Tous les trente-six du mois” is an ironic way to say “Never / Almost never“. It is an absurd reference to a situation that will certainly never happen, since there isn’t a 36th day of the month.
It’s very similar to the English expression “Once in a blue moon“
If someone asks you how often you do sport, you can say “Tous les 36 du mois !” a.k.a. never…
You can also use similar expressions, for example, if someone asks you when you will stop eating fast food, you can answer: “À la Saint-Glinglin” → During Saint-Glinglin’s day (A day that doesn’t exist) or “Quand les poules auront des dents” (When the hens will have teeth).
You might wonder about the number 36. Because, any number above 31 works too, right?
Well, there are tons of French expressions with the number 36…here are some:
And what’s crazy is that we don’t know for sure why… One of the most common theories is that it comes from ancient Egyptian astronomy and their 36 decans (small constellations), but nothing is certain…