30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Local France
French Word of the Day: Une gow
Why do I need to know
une gow?
Because
if you spend any time with French teenagers, you might hear this word.
What does it mean?
Une gow
- roughly pronounced oon go - is a slang term you will probably only hear from French speakers under the age of 30.
Also written as
go,
the word
gow
refers to a woman, specifically a young woman. It is roughly the same as
meuf
(the backwards slang version of
femme
).
Oftentimes,
gow
is used to refer to a girlfriend, so a young man might say
je vais inviter ma gow
(I am going to invite my girlfriend). Some young women also use the word to talk about their closest girlfriends.
The more common term for girlfriend is
copine,
although older people are more likely to use
petite amie
.
Gow
has been made more popular by French rappers and pop artists, like Niska, who used the word in his song
Réseaux
in 2017, and Wejdene in her song
Ta Gow
in 2020.
As for the origins of the word
gow
, there are a few theories. One hypothesis is that it comes from the slang used by young people in Côte d'Ivoire and West Africa.
In the Nouchi language, which is spoken in Côte d'Ivoire, the slang word
go
means girl or woman, and this was originally borrowed from the Bambara language spoken in Mali.
There is also a theory that it is an abbreviation of another, older French slang term:
gonzesse
. Nowadays, it can generally refer to girls or women, but in the mid-20th century, it referred to a prostitute or the pimp's wife, and then went on to mean promiscuous girl. As such,
gonzesse
can be seen as sexist and offensive.
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On the other hand,
Gow
(or
go
) is not particularly offensive, but it is quite colloquial and primarily used amongst young people.
If you're over 30, this is probably one to 'know not show', but it will help you to understand the young folk and keep up with popular culture.
Use it like this
J'ai croisé Kevin au restaurant, et il était avec sa gow. -
I ran into Kevin at the restaurant and he was there with his girlfriend.
J'vais demander à ma gow si on a qqc de prévu.
- I'm gonna ask my girlfriend if we have something planned.
