cafard

English

Etymology

From French cafard.

Noun

cafard (plural cafards)

1. Depression; melancholy.
   • 1918, Elizabeth Frazer, Old Glory and Verdun, page 169:

     That's the worst trouble with the soldiers in the trenches — nothing to do. It gives them the cafards, the black butterflies, the blue devils, the jimjams, the hump.

   • 1957, Lawrence Durrell, Justine:

     At such times when the cafard of the city seized her, I was at my wits' end to devise a means of rousing her.

French

Etymology

Francized form of Arabic كَافِر (kāfir, “unbeliever”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ka.faʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʁ

Noun

cafard m (plural cafards, feminine cafarde)

1. hypocrite

   Synonyms: bigot, hypocrite

2. (by extension) tattletale, informant, rat
3. (entomology) cockroach

   Synonyms: blatte, cancrelat, (Quebec) coquerelle, (Antilles, Louisiana) ravet

4. (informal) depression, melancholy

   Synonyms: bourdon, mélancolie, spleen

   avoir le cafard ― to feel blue

Derived terms

• avoir le cafard

Further reading

• “cafard”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.