French-based Creole Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Citations in the Category French-based Creole

French-based creole. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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béké n. When Leblanc made his political debut, in 1957, he joined the Dominica Labour Party, which had been founded two years before by the novelist and poet Phyllis Shand Allfrey (author of The Orchid House and a rare locally born béké, as whites are known in the local patois), and E.C. Loblack. [French-based Creole Dominica] [full cite] (Nov. 22, 2004)

chimère n. “I have a mother, a wife, children, why would I vote? I could be shot by a chimere,” said Kapito, 40, an unemployed taxi driver who gave only his first name, using a pejorative term to refer to armed pro-Aristide militants. [French French-based Creole Haiti] [full cite] (Jun. 6, 2005)

fais do-do n. Despite the album’s throwback ethos, the boys in the band keep things hopping—“fais-do-do-ing,” in New Orleans parlance. [Lousiana English French French-based Creole] [full cite] (Dec. 13, 2004)

passablanc adj. Ms. Broyard learned the Creole word for the way her father had lived: passablanc. To this day virtually all Creoles are related to or at least know people who have tried to better their prospects by abandoning family and denying any black heritage to pass as white.…“One day in my 20s I woke up and thought, ‘I’m going to be passablanc today.’ I took the bus to the white beauty parlor on Canal Street and got my hair done. It was nothing!” [Lousiana New Orleans French-based Creole Race Colloquial] [full cite] (Nov. 12, 2007)

rat pa kaka n. s. I didn’t have time to get away, and got shot in the leg by the rat pa kaka [note : Creole term for “rats that are still-living”].…It’s getting worse because nobody can talk about the rat pa kaka doing such things. If you tell the police, they can exterminate your whole family, so everyone is afraid to talk. [French-based Creole Haiti] [full cite] (Apr. 3, 2005)

tap-tap n. She leaves the house at 4 a.m. to catch the “tap-tap,” one of the privately-owned vans, buses, and trucks that serve as Haiti’s equivalent of public transportation. The always crowded tap-taps—coined for the two-tap system for signaling boarding and exiting—are painted in carnival colors and emblazoned with hopeful messages such as “God is merciful” and “Love is Eternal.” [French-based Creole Haiti Automobiles & Transportation] [full cite] (Aug. 5, 2004)

tap-tap n. Once on the road to Aux Cayes we passed a tap-tap (a small pickup truck) wreck and there was a man laying in the road dead. I realized how the U.S. is so candy coated. They hide death there. [French-based Creole Haiti Automobiles & Transportation] [full cite] (Aug. 5, 2004)

tap-tap n. Strange little buses called “tap-taps,” constructed on flatbed trucks and decorated over every inch with paintings of flowers, animals, Bible stories and proverbs, ply along the Avenue des Salines parallel with the harbor at intervals of seconds. [French-based Creole Haiti Automobiles & Transportation] [full cite] (Aug. 5, 2004)

tap-tap n. I was cheering them on when a tap-tap, the gaily painted bus, careened into the crowd and knocked a paper mask flying. [French-based Creole Haiti Automobiles & Transportation] [full cite] (Aug. 5, 2004)

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