What does it mean to be “un pigeon” in French?

In everyday French, un pigeon is the sucker — the naïve person who gets ripped off or taken in. Say je suis un pigeon and you’re admitting you were duped, usually after overpaying or believing something too good to be true. It’s casual and self-deprecating, the go-to word for “I got played.” The matching verb is se faire pigeonner, “to get suckered.”

The image is old: since the late 1400s the easily-trapped pigeon stood in for the gullible victim, alongside the older se faire plumer (“get plucked”). Here the speaker admits being a pigeon for buying the latest overpriced phone, then jokes he coos like a piaf — piaf being affectionate slang for a little bird, famously the nickname of singer Édith Piaf.