Learning French: an excrement list of words for poo

One of the delights of learning a foreign tongue is finding out what it can do that my own language cannot. 

During a recent Anglophone-Francophone lunch with friends, for example, someone happened to point out that French has a richer repertoire of words for animal excrement than English. 

It is the equivalent, I suppose, of Arctic dwellers having endless words for snow and the British being good at differentiating between different varieties of rain.

I apologise in advance if this seems a disagreeable subject, but if you are willing to delay your breakfast and hold your nose for the next few paragraphs, I invite you to follow me down to ground level.

As a by-product, it is worth getting to know the vocabulary for human digestive waste because your doctor may want to ask you some intimate questions about your movements.

Avoiding all euphemisms, we are dealing here with what English calls animal droppings (or faeces, dung or scat) and French matière fécale. 

The individual discarded items in question are: selles (also for humans as this is an acceptable medical term that your doctor might use: aller à la selle means to move your bowels), étrons or crottes.

Read more: When and why do we say faire contre mauvaise fortune bon cœur?

What does caca mean?

In more familiar language, particularly talking to children, the word to use is caca. 

You will have also heard the ubiquitous slang word for excrement, merde, usually used more as an exclamation and expletive than in its literal sense. 

However, it may be deployed in an imperative telling you not to step in something foul (or even fowl). 

Depending on the context, the m-word can also refer to a messy room or an emotional problem.

Returning to the strict taxonomic subject in hand, every animal seems to have its own name for its waste product. Here is a short, non-comprehensive lexicon of the most common ones you are likely to hear.

I will return to the subject of translation later, but this can serve as an appetiser, if that is not the wrong word.

Read more: The origins and meaning of être Gros-Jean comme devant

Animal droppings in French

Bouse: the excrement of ruminant bovid mammals, such as cattle and bison and also elephants. ‘Cow pats’ to you and me.

Chiures: Insect excrement, especially of flies. You may hear the word frass, too.

Colombine: A very pretty name for pigeon droppings, which served as a very important fertiliser until chemicals were introduced. Dovecots were specially designed so that the excrement could be easily harvested.

Crottes: rabbits, but most of all dogs. Crottes de chien are what irresponsible owners do not pick up on town and city streets.

Crottin: horse excrement. If it is to be used as manure it is called fumier. Not to be confused with crottin de chèvre, which is a type of cheese whose name has a different etymology.

Epreintes: the faecal material of otters and other mammals. 

Fiente: the white excrement from inland birds. 

Guano: the droppings of seabirds and bats

Laisées: the dung of game, particularly cervids (roe deer) and wild boar, but also other wild animals such as weasels and badgers. Sometimes deer droppings are known as moquettes. Deer that live on grazing land leave behind fumées. 

Pélote fécale: the excrement of rodents 

Pétoulettes: a rather endearing word for the pellets left by sheep and goats.

Unless you are a hunter or a wildlife tracker (or, as it happens, an archaeologist), you probably won’t need many, let alone all, of these words in your active vocabulary.

However, it is still worth knowing about them in order to understand the nuances of conversations you may get involved in, and to enjoy nature programmes.