‘Vachement’ was popular, figurative and untranslatable slang for ‘cool’ or ‘great’ when I was in
Aix-en-Provence many years ago.
Literally it means cow-like, but that doesn’t really help understand the
usage. But the cows on this coastline
seem the coolest ones I’ve ever seen.
They know the beach is cooler, and move down to the water line during
the day to chew their cud and maybe even to enjoy the view. They’re often more numerous than people this
year as it’s a particularly bad year for Senegalese tourism given the
elections. The cows, however, don’t seem bothered by
much of anything, and they leave the beach at night for the scrub forest
nearby, I’m told. It rather changes the connotations of the word- bovine.
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