FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

le sablier (sah-blee-yay) n.m.
hour-glass, sand-glass; egg timer

L'amour tue l'intelligence. Le cerveau fait sablier avec le coeur. L'un ne se remplit que pour vider l'autre.

Love kills intelligence. The mind forms an hour-glass with the heart. One fills itself only to empty the other. --Jules Renard

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A Day in a French Life...

"Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq*..." my daughter gurgles, brushing her teeth and counting under bubbly breath. She is taking her brother's advice which he, in turn, has taken from the dentist: to brush for three minutes, three times a day.

As we don't have un sablier* to mark the passage of time, the kids have come up with the counting idea. If his sister fudges, Max reminds her: "Trois fois soixante, Jackie!" three times sixty! If she prefers, he tells her, she can just count to a hundred and eighty.

Jackie's dad tells her to "bien frotter!"* and that twirling on one's heels while brushing one's teeth won't help to loosen any more plaque.

At the next sink I take a few grains of my family's advice. "Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq..." I count and scrub, pirouetting just for the heck of it.

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*References: un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq = one, two, three, four, five; un sablier (m) = hour-glass; bien frotter = brush well

Listen to sound clip: hear Jean-Marc pronounce the word 'sablier': Download sablier.wav

If you are looking to say "hour-glass figure" then leave 'sablier' out of the equation and use "silhouette de rêve" instead!

And finally, does your charm bracelet have the sablier pendant?: http://sabliercharm.notlong.com/

Language learning in books: Tune Up Your French: Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Spoken French