French Word of the day: Fringale

If you ever find yourself absolutely starving, this is a useful French word to know.

You might hear someone say j'ai une petite fringale when they fancy a snack between meals.

The word fringale , roughly pronounced fran-gahl (listen here ), describes a sudden, intense feeling of hunger, often the kind that makes you feel like you urgently need to eat.

Fringale appears to have originated as a transformation of the equestrian term faim-valle (bad hunger), which was once used to describe a disease affecting horses that gave them an intense sensation of hunger which forced them to stop. They could only continue once they had satisfied their hunger.

Until the 19th century, the variant term faim calle was used to mean “to be ravenously hungry” like the French expression avoir une faim de loup , literally “to have a wolf’s hunger”. It was around the same time that fringale emerged, and it is now defined as an irresistible feeling of hunger experienced between meals.

J’ai une fringale. Il faut que je mange tout de suite. - I’m suddenly really hungry. I need to eat now.

J’ai eu une grosse fringale après le sport. - I was absolutely starving after working out.

Je prends toujours un goûter pour éviter les fringales. - I always have a snack to avoid getting really hungry.