This winter, the expression on everyone’s lips seems to be pas mal. We learn this in college as meaning not bad. However, colloquially it can also mean something like a lot. In fact, I’ve been hearing it quite a bit even from a friend who prefers the 17th-century language of Molière to the language of today and doesn’t speak very colloquially at all. You can find good examples of how to use pas mal in this sense on Laura Lawless’s Lawless French web site. Here are some more:
If you use pas mal to modify nouns, it’s a quantity term, and is followed by de:
Be aware that even the expression as we learn it in school–that is, with the meaning not bad–can be difficult to understand, with the intended meaning being conveyed in part by intonation. There’s a very nice video on the intonational subtleties of the expression here, on the Français avec Pierre YouTube channel.
Zipf's Law 
Funny how some expressions last and/or resurface. Sounds exactly like my teenage years 🙂
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This suggests that it’s taken me two years to pick up on it, which is depressing!
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No, don’t confuse me any more. I have had to COMPLETELY unlearn all my school French and pronunciation- it seems to bear no relation to the love language .
ZIp, can you please ask your French colleagues if “chiquenaude” has any rude or offensive connotations please? I get a different answer everywhere
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Coteetcampagne, I haven’t forgotten about this–my host just hasn’t been around lately.
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It’s Gill, by the way…
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Incidentally, that should have been “live language” this phone has an opinionated mind of it’s own
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