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What does “taches de rousseur” mean in French?

In everyday French, freckles are usually called taches de rousseur — “spots of redness.” More technical words exist, but you rarely hear them in normal speech. The key part is rousseur, which comes from roux, the word for red or red-haired. So freckles are linked directly to the idea of red hair. One freckle is une tache de rousseur; many are des taches de rousseur. Learning roux gives you the whole phrase for free.

The clip describes a shy boy: “Le garçon a les cheveux roux. Il a des taches de rousseur.” (“The boy has red hair. He has freckles.”) Putting roux and rousseur side by side makes the shared root easy to see. Tache means a spot, mark, or stain. Rousseur is a noun made from roux (red-haired, reddish). The picture is literally “little red marks.” The same root gives you un roux / une rousse for a red-haired man or woman — used as a noun or adjective. Two more words from this scene: les cheveux bouclés (“curly hair”) and chauve (“bald”), as in “Le professeur est chauve.” All three words come up often when French describes how people look.