What does “gober” mean in French?

Blague sur les règles, les œufs et les poules

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A1 French listening practice · French · Curated for beginners

💡 Did you know?
gober
French verb with a double meaning
To swallow whole without chewing — and, figuratively, to swallow any story you’re told.

“Gober un œuf” is to down a raw egg in one gulp, no chewing — the literal sense of “gober,” to swallow by suction. The fun is the second meaning: to “gober” a story is to believe it whole and uncritically, just as English says you “swallowed” a lie. One verb, both the gullible person and the gulped-down egg.

“Elle gobe tout ce qu’on lui dit” means she’ll believe anything. There’s also the dreamy “gober les mouches” (to swallow flies) — to stand around gawping, lost in a daydream. The egg-and-oyster image is so fixed that French speakers picture exactly that head-tilted, one-gulp move whenever “gober” comes up.

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this A1 French listening practice listening practice?

88.9%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common French words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday French.

General French frequency

88.9%
Top 1,000
88.9%
Top 2,000
93.7%
Top 5,000

Spoken French frequency

86.2%
Top 1,000
100%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Conversational vocabulary
This reel’s words appear more often in subtitle-based spoken-French data than in general usage, so it may feel closer to everyday conversation.

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s A1 level.

ovule
3×
Rare / outside top 5,000
ovum, egg cell
gobe
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
swallow, gulp down
œuf
4×
Rare / outside top 5,000
egg
poule
1×
Top 5,000Common in speech
hen, female chicken
gobe un œuf
1×
to swallow/gobble up

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · Lexique 3.83 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

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