Welcome back to Expressions bien de chez nous! Last week we explored a mean French expression, and today we are staying on the same topic. This week you will learn another colourful turn of phrase: en faire voir de toutes les couleurs. It sounds poetic, but its meaning is far less pleasant than it looks.

Where does this expression come from?

This expression first appeared in the second half of the 19th century. It is rooted in the image of the chromatic circle, the colour wheel that contains every colour imaginable. Because the chromatic circle holds everything, from the brightest shade to the darkest, it became a metaphor for going through everything: the good, the bad and the truly difficult.

Over time, the expression shifted toward a more negative meaning. Today it is almost always used to describe enduring hardship, suffering or persistent trouble caused by someone else. The rainbow, in this case, is anything but cheerful.

What does it mean?

The expression is built from two verbs: faire, which means “to make” or “to do”, and voir, which means “to see”. Add the pronouns toutes (all) and couleurs (colours), and you get a phrase that literally means “to make someone see all the colours”. Figuratively, it means to make someone suffer, to put them through all kinds of hardship or trouble.

What gives the expression its particular edge is the verb faire. It introduces an active agent: someone is deliberately submitting another person to difficulties. The expression implies causing trouble, forcing someone through pain, annoyance or repeated stress. It is not something that just happens to you. Someone is doing it to you.

You may also hear it without the faire, as in en voir de toutes les couleurs: to go through all the colours, meaning to experience all manner of difficulties yourself, without a specific person being responsible. Both forms are widely used in everyday French.

How do you use it?

The best way to understand a French expression is to see it in context. Here are four examples showing how en faire voir de toutes les couleurs is used in real situations.

A mother talking about the difficult early years with her daughter:

“Ma fille m’en a fait voir de toutes les couleurs jusqu’à l’âge de 5 ou 6 ans.”
My daughter put me through all sorts of difficulties until she was 5 or 6 years old.

A man describing a conflict with his neighbour, who threatened to make his life miserable if he did not cut down trees blocking his pool from the sun:

“Mon voisin m’a menacé de m’en faire voir de toutes les couleurs si je ne coupais pas certains de mes arbres qui l’empêche d’avoir sa piscine au soleil l’après-midi.”
My neighbour threatened to make my life very difficult if I did not cut down some of my trees that stop his pool getting afternoon sun.

Someone talking about their cousin, who had a rough start in his first job:

“Mon cousin en a vu de toutes les couleurs avec son premier patron, qui était un type épouvantable.”
My cousin went through a really hard time with his first boss, who was a dreadful man.

A traveller recalling a disastrous holiday caused by the locals in the village where they were camping:

“J’ai passé des vacances lamentables : on en a vu de toutes les couleurs avec les habitants du village où nous campions.”
I had a dreadful holiday: we went through all sorts of trouble because of the people in the village where we were camping.

More French expressions to discover

French is full of expressions like this one: vivid, surprising and rooted in unexpected history. En faire voir de toutes les couleurs is a great example of how a seemingly cheerful image, the colour wheel, can carry a very different meaning in everyday speech.

If you enjoyed this, explore more French expressions from Bordeaux that will surprise and delight you. And if you want to practise using expressions like these in real conversations, our French language courses in Bordeaux are the perfect place to start. You can also practise with our online quizzes on French expressions.

Learning French is not just about grammar and vocabulary. It is about understanding how French people really speak, the images they use, the history they carry in their everyday words. That is something you can only truly discover by living it, right here in Bordeaux. Take a look at our cultural activities in Bordeaux and immerse yourself fully in the language.

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