This French expression is an old one, but still very popular amongst today’s youth.
Why do I need to know faire le kéké?
Because when you were a teenager, you probably wanted to do this too.
What does it mean?
Faire le kéké – roughly pronounced fair luh kay kay – means to go out of your way to do something to impress those around you. In English you might say ‘big yourself up’ or ‘play the big man’.
Unsurprisingly, it is common amongst adolescents, excited to gain the approval of their peers.
The word kéké itself more or less means ‘braggart’ and its usage dates back to the mid 20th century at least, coming from the Midi region in southern France.
The original phrase was likely a provincial slang expression of ‘faire le càcou’ or ‘le caque’.
However, some linguists also believe the word may be related to another piece of 20th-century slang – the term ‘cagou’ which meant ‘chief of thieves’, and over time went on to mean someone who would draw attention to themselves.
Use it like this
J’ai sauté dans la Seine pour faire le kéké, mais personne n’a semblé très impressionné. – I jumped into the Seine to look cool, but no one seemed very impressed.
Quand il était adolescent, il fumait beaucoup de cigarettes. Je pense que c’était pour faire le kéké, il n’a jamais eu l’air d’aimer ça. – When he was a teenager, he smoked a lot of cigarettes. I think it was mostly to impress his peers, he never seemed to really enjoy it.