Discuss and learn French: French vocabulary, French grammar, French culture etc.
French Vocab Games app for iPhone/iPad
French-English dictionary
French grammar
French vocab/phrases
For the latest updates, follow @FrenchUpdates on Twitter!
Looking for the right idiomatic translation of the word describing breaking a tie in a competition. In English, "tiebreaking" or variants. In Spanish, "desempatar". It appears that a slang term might be "jouer la belle", but perhaps there's a more formal accepted term. Merci.
Tags:
hi
you are right
we say usually "faire la belle"
we say : "on fait la belle ?" (usually used in "pétanque", the game with metallic balls, or cards games)
when there is equality in a game played twice, that is the third play to know who win
but "SE faire la belle" means to escape from prison
Permalink Reply by Vedas on May 9, 2014 at 8:52pm Hello,
Definitely the context matters, for instance for a tennis match you can either say "tie-break" or "jeux décisif" , whereas "faire la belle" for instance would be used for a table tennis casual match.
The context is golf.
Permalink Reply by Vedas on May 9, 2014 at 10:19pm ok ,
I'm not familiar with golf I just know that a lot of the vocabulary used is the same than in English
Now "faire la belle" is quite a generic expression that can apply for various contexts and indeed I 've found it on a French golf forum so you can say:
"le match, la revanche et la belle" when speaking about golf.
© 2025 Created by Neil Coffey.
Powered by