🎧 Audio by Marie Assel Cambier, a native speaker & professional voice artist from France
Level: B1 (Intermediate)
The French Word of the Day is flic, a slang term for “police officer” or “cop.” It’s one of those words you’ll almost never find in a textbook, but you’ll hear constantly in everyday French, especially in movies and TV shows.
✅ Meaning
✅ Pronunciation
✅ Example sentences
✅ Related Words & Expressions
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📘 Flic meaning
Flic (masculine or feminine) is a common French slang word for police officer. It comes from 19th-century argot, likely from the word fligue (slang for gun). Today, it’s widely used in informal, everyday speech, while the formal word un policier / une policière is heard in official or polite contexts.
🎧 Flic pronunciation
Flic is pronounced /flik/ in IPA, roughly “fleek.”
📝 French and English examples
Flic – cop
Il y a deux flics devant la gare.
There are two police officers in front of the train station.
S’il y a un problème, j’appelle les flics.
If there’s a problem, I’ll call the cops.
Martin s’est fait arrêter par les flics hier soir parce qu’il a trop bu.
Martin got arrested by the cops last night because he drank too much.
👉 Want to take a deeper dive into arrêter vs s’arrêter?
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Sylvie est policière depuis cinq ans.
Sylvie has been a police officer for five years.
👉 Confused about depuis (since, for)?
See my full lesson here »
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🔗 Related words and expressions
- le keuf — also slang for police officer
- la police — the police
- un policier / une policière — police officer (formal)
- un agent de police — police officer (official term)
- un gendarme — gendarme (military police, common in rural France)
- un inspecteur / une inspectrice — detective, inspector
- un commissaire — police commissioner
🚀 Expand your French vocabulary!
Now that you’ve mastered flic, take a look at my lesson on mec, a slang word for “guy” that you’ll hear constantly in everyday French.
👉 Learn mec here »
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