what does “manque à gagner” mean in French?

“Manque à gagner” is the French way to name money you don’t lose but never get to earn — foregone revenue, a shortfall, the sale that never happens. Literally “a lack to earn,” it’s an invariable masculine phrase that lives in business, accounting and legal language, where it covers the profits a delay, ban or injury kept out of your pocket. It’s the difference between losing what you had and missing what you’d have made.

A shop owner figuring the cost of a closed terrace might shrug, “ça sera un manque à gagner” — that’s lost business, for sure. Lawyers claim “le manque à gagner” as damages for lost income; a factory counts its “manque à gagner” after a strike. Here a Clermont-Ferrand restaurateur uses it exactly that way: a curfew during the World Cup means he can’t show the matches outside, and the empty terrace is pure manque à gagner — sympathetic to the mayor, but still revenue gone.