Ten things (besides bread) that the French call a 'baguette'

Magic wands, legs, and straight hair.

Hello there! New episode alert!

This week’s Earful Tower podcast episode is only seven minutes long. Coffee break podcasting.

The ep features me sharing my observations about the word baguette. You see, I always thought a baguette was a long piece of bread and nothing else.

And then, one day, I was ordering some sushi in Paris and the guy asked me if I’d like some baguettes to go with the meal. Huh?

French bread with sushi? That didn’t seem right. There was no context either, so it took a while before I realized he was offering me chopsticks. That’s right, chopsticks are called baguettes in France.

I checked the dictionary and it turns out that 15 different things are called baguettes in French, everything from your legs to your hair to magic wands.

In the episode below you’ll hear me going over it all. I even asked my friend

Véronique Savoye

to translate the following sentence into French: “She had straight hair and long legs, and ate her baguettes with chopsticks”. Total nonsense in English, admittedly, but ridiculous indeed in French. Though Véro made it quite poetic, I think you’ll agree.

Listen below or wherever you get podcasts.

Plus, you can click here to see all the ten specific things, via one of my most popular website posts of all time.

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PS: That image above was created with Artificial Intelligence. Here’s another one that added the magic wand element too :)