Welcome to Expressions bien de chez nous! Today we introduce you to a new French expression that is perhaps a little less flattering than the others: faire porter le chapeau. It involves hats, blame and a good dose of bad faith. Let’s find out what it means and where it comes from.

What does “faire porter le chapeau” mean?

The expression is built from two verbs and a noun. Faire means “to make” or “to do”, porter means “to wear” or “to carry”, and chapeau means “hat”. Taken literally, it means to make someone wear a hat. And figuratively, it is not so far from that image: faire porter le chapeau à quelqu’un means to deny your own mistake or wrongdoing and blame someone else for it. You are placing something on another person’s head that does not belong to them.

It is used to describe a situation where someone refuses to take responsibility and shifts the blame onto another person. Not very fair, but unfortunately very common in everyday life.

Where does this expression come from?

There is no definitive historical record of the exact origin of this expression. However, the image of the hat gives us a strong clue. A hat can be a form of disguise: it covers the face and helps someone avoid being recognised. It is the accessory of someone who has something to hide.

In this light, faire porter le chapeau à quelqu’un means to dress someone up as the guilty party, to point the finger at them and make them appear responsible. It is not just about blaming someone. It also carries the idea of damaging their reputation, of making them wear a label they did not earn.

Some examples

Imagine three children playing in their room. Something gets broken, and two of them immediately say: “It was Sarah.” By doing this, they are both faisant porter le chapeau à Sarah. They take no responsibility and blame her to avoid getting into trouble.

A second example: a politician has misused public funds and wants to avoid being held accountable. Instead of admitting the mistake, he accuses a colleague to deflect attention from himself. Here, politician number one fait porter le chapeau au politicien numéro deux.

The expression also appears in literature. Here is an example from a French novel:

“Ils voudraient que nous fassions porter le chapeau à l’un de nos sous-traitants et je dois me battre pour que nous assumions cette erreur dont nous sommes les seuls véritables responsables.”
They would like us to lay all responsibility on one of our subcontractors, and I have to fight so that we can own this mistake, which is entirely our fault.
Jennifer Hayward, Une brûlante étreinte, trad. Fabrice Canepa, Harlequin, 2016

This last example is particularly telling. It shows the expression being used in a professional context, where the temptation to blame a subcontractor is very real, and where resisting that temptation is presented as the ethical choice.

Keep exploring French expressions

Faire porter le chapeau is a great example of how French expressions often carry a very visual logic. Once you understand the image behind them, they are easy to remember and fun to use. Do you know an expression in your own language that means something similar? The French love a good idiom, and so do we.

Discover more colourful French expressions in our expressions from Bordeaux series. And if you want to practise using them in real conversations, our French language courses in Bordeaux are the perfect place to do it. You can also test your knowledge with our online quizzes on French expressions.

Learning French is not just about memorising rules. It is about understanding how people really think and communicate. Expressions like faire porter le chapeau give you a window into French culture, humour and everyday life. Come and experience it for yourself with our cultural activities in Bordeaux.

Channel Trotters: French in Bordeaux