What Does The French Idiom “en vouloir à” Mean?

I love it when readers ask me great questions. Here is an e-mail I recently received from Robert:

“I’m reading Le petit Nicolas and I noticed a use of en in the story of Les Carnets that caught my eye. It goes like this, “Même la maîtresse avait l’air triste. Nous, on ne lui en veut pas à la maîtresse.” I’m guessing it translates to something like, “Even the teacher looked sad. We didn’t want that for her.” My problem is that if I was composing that sentence I would never have thought of using en. Can you clarify the thinking here?”

This is a great question because the problem sentence is an excellent example of an idiomatic and rather sophisticated use of the pronoun en in the speech of a young child. I’m not totally convinced that a 8-year old child would actually speak like that, but that is a minor point.

There are lots of interesting things going on in these two sentences. The word la maîtresse (d’école) is a colloquial term for a female elementary school teacher. The more formal term is institutrice.

Notice that the verb avoir in the first sentence is in the imparfait tense form, avait, as the speaker narrates the story. But the speaker then switches to veut, a present tense form of vouloir. The speaker is still in the past but is now talking subjectively about the feelings of the students at that moment.

Notice, of course, the pronouns Nous, on, “we.” This is very typical of spoken French where the on is much more common than nous as a subject pronoun. See my blog post on this subject.

The ne is written here, but it is very likely not pronounced in rapid speech. Notice how the pas that goes with ne comes after the verb. The ne…pas frames the pronouns and the verb.

What does the pronoun en refer to?

The tricky part of the sentence is the word en in: Nous, on lui en veut pas à la maîtresse.

Here is a blog post on the awesome pronounn en. Most readers undoubtedly know that the pronoun en – not to be confused with the preposition en as in en colère “angry” or en forme – “in shape” usually refers to something, a person, a fact, a thing that was mentioned earlier in the conversation. Here are two typical examples:

Qui veut de l’eau? Who cares for some water?
Moi, j’en veux. I do (I wan’t some).

Que sait-elle de l’accident? What does she know about the accident?
Elle n’en sait rien. She knows nothing (about it).

The en refers to de l’eau and de l’accident. So, when we see or hear en, we naturally look for the antecedent to which it refers. This is where Robert ran into trouble in the given example. It’s not clear what en refers to.

French idioms with en

Idioms are two or more words where the meaning is not easily derived from the constituent words. In fact, there are two levels of meaning. There is the literal meaning based on the meanings of the individual words. Then there is the more important second global meaning based on some sort of image, metaphor or historical reference. For example, in English, “to let the cat out of the bag” can be interpreted on these two levels. But most of the time, we use it as follows:

He opened his big mouth and let the cat out of the bag.

As I point out in my blog post, there is a series of French idioms based on the combination en + verb. In these idioms the en forms a unit with the verb and the whole unit takes on a special meaning. The en makes no clear reference to an antecedent. In fact, the en doesn’t seem to have a specific purpose at all.

The problem learners encounter is how to distinguish between the non-idiomatic and idiomatic expressions. This is where the general context is very important.

There exists in French the idiom en vouloir à that generally means:
to dislike, to hold a grudge against someone, to have something against someone.

Note that the idiom contains the three words en vouloir à. The preposition à tells us that the idiom is used with indirect objects. Here is an example with the third person indirect plural pronoun:

Je ne leur en veux pas malgré tous les coups bas qu’ils m’ont faits.

I don’t hold a grudge against them despite all the nasty things they’ve done to me.

Here is an example that is often heard in speeches when one is about to thank people:

Je m’en voudrais de ne pas remercier toutes les personnes qui ont travaillé au projet.
I would be remiss not to mention all the people who worked on the project.

Coming back to our initial example, Nous, on lui en veut pas à la maîtresse, the lui refers to la maîtresse that is in the previous sentence and also at the end of this sentence. The final à la maîtresse is unnecessary, but is added for emphasis and style. Very common in spoken French.

The translation of the example would be along the following lines:

Even the teacher was sad. We really didn’t have anything against her.

Other French idioms with en

Idiomatic expressions with en include forms like s’en douter, en arriver là, en revenir, s’en sortir, s’en prendre à, en pouvoir. A very common one, derived from en pouvoir is :

Je n’en peux plus ! I can’t take it anymore!

The en here has not particular meaning. It’s just part of the idiom.

Finally, here is an example of the use of en for purely stylistic purposes. The 1956 film by Alfred Hitchcock, The Man Who Knew Too Much, became in French:

L’homme qui en savait trop

L'homme qui en savait trop

Film de Alfred Hitchcock – The Man Who Knew Too Much

The en here does not refer to anything in particular. My feeling is that it was included to emphasize some sinister event that someone should not have known about.

Stanley Aléong is a polyglot, author, musician, language coach in French, English and Spanish, language workshop facilitator and organizer of French-English conversation meetups in Montreal, Canada. He likes to share his passion for languages and believes that anybody can learn to speak a foreign language well with the right methods and tools. He has also invented a cool visual learning tool called the Essential French Wall Chart Calendar. Reach him at info@langcal.com.

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