pardon my French

From the use of French to mean “vulgar language”, ostensibly because the words used are not in English.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌpɑːdn̩ maɪ ˈfɹɛn(t)ʃ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌpɑɹd(ə)n maɪ ˈfɹɛn(t)ʃ/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛntʃ
• Hyphenation: par‧don my French

pardon my French (third-person singular simple present pardons my French, present participle pardoning my French, simple past and past participle pardoned my French)

1. (intransitive, idiomatic, often humorous) To excuse the speaker's frankness of expression or profanity.

   Synonyms: excuse my français, excuse my French, pardon mon français, pardon my français, pardonnez my French

   That computer is a worthless piece of shit, if you’ll pardon my French.

   • 1960, Diana Holman-Hunt, chapter 6, in My Grandmothers and I, London: Hamish Hamilton, published 1988, →ISBN, page 162:

     'Have you been in England long?' / 'A damned sight too long—if you'll pardon my French,' she answered.

   • 1986 June 11, John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, spoken by Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick):

     Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond.

   • 2018 July 16, “Check”, in The Vault, performed by Kash Doll [pseudonym; Arkeisha Antoinette Knight]:

     Look, now it's the dolly, not Parton / But pardon my French / Give no fucks about no nigga / Give no fucks about no bitch

• not to put too fine a point on it
• Thesaurus:swear

• pardon my French on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “pardon my French, pardon (also excuse) my French.” under “French, adj. and n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, December 2022.
• “pardon my French, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.