Some days the bear eats you, some days you eat the bear

Some days the bear will eat you,

Some days you eat the bear.

–Joan Armatrading, Eating the Bear

There’s a store in my little neighborhood whose sign has always puzzled me somewhat.  In order to understand it, I needed to learn bear-related vocabulary in French:

• l’ours (nom masculin): male bear; boor, curmudgeon.
• l’ourse (nom fémenin): female bear.  Pronounced [urs], not [urz].
• l’ourson (nom masculin): bear cub; teddy bear.
• le nounours: teddy bear.  Pronounced [nunurs]–the s is not silent, as you would expect it to be.

L’ourson (teddy bear) is not to be confused with:

• l’oursin (nom masculin): sea urchin.  Yes, they are eaten in France, not just in Japan.

Some of the words meaning “bear” are used in idiomatic expressions:

• un vrai nounours: “a real teddy bear.”  The French Etc. web site explains the expression like this: “un vrai nounours means ‘a real gem’…un vrai nounours is used to describe a person who is really sweet, going along with everything easily.”
• un vrai ours: “a real bear.”  French Etc. explains it like this: “‘a real boor’, a person who isn’t sociable.”

“Bear” has some interesting slang meanings in English.  Here are a couple:

• A difficult situation or thing.  “I have to finish a project proposal by New Year’s Eve–it’s a bear, because I have to find a way to smoothly integrate high-throughput assay analysis and theoretical linguistics.”
• A gay man who is big, bearded, and hairy.