Friday, March 20, 2015

PAS MAL

Not bad, not bad at all. Pas mal, pas mal de tout. 

As in English, the French familiar expression pas mal is elastic and can be stretched from meaning a simple "so-so" to a resounding exclamation of approval. Much depends on the intonation and punctuation. It can also be wielded to say that there is a significant number or quantity of something. For example: "Il y a pas mal d'armoires urbaines peintes en trompe l'oeil à Versailles." There are a lot of utility boxes painted in trompe l'oeil in Versailles. In the one pictured above, the stream of water and drain are particularly well-done.  Utterly.

Vocabulary
tout à fait:  utterly


©2015 P.B. Lecron

1 comment:

  1. Architectural details are one of my passions... This one, even in it's fantastic fakeness is brilliant :)

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