What does “maringouin” mean in Quebec French?
On entend rien et on parle de maringouins
A2 French listening practice · Québec French · Curated for beginners
In Quebec a mosquito is un maringouin, not un moustique. The word is a long-haul traveller: French borrowed it in the sixteenth century from Tupi-Guarani, the language family of coastal Brazil, and it spread with French speakers across the Atlantic world. Same insect, an entirely different route into the language — and maringouin is what you will actually hear at a Quebec campsite.
It is attested in French from about 1566 and is still alive in Louisiana, the Antilles, Manitoba and parts of Normandy as well as Quebec. Moustique is understood everywhere in Quebec but sounds bookish beside it. This whole scrap of shouted-over-the-noise banter hangs on the word — t’as un maringouin — which is about as Québécois as a sentence gets.
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · Lexique 3.83 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.