Why do I need to know haut les coeurs?
This French expression is good to know if you want to cheer someone up.
What does it mean?
The expression haut les coeurs, roughly pronounced oh lay kur (listen here), literally means "hearts up", but in reality it means "chin up" or "keep your spirits high". It is usually said to encourage someone who is feeling discouraged, anxious or sad, for them to stay optimistic.
Haut les cœurs is a cry of encouragement, used either to motivate yourself or someone else to face a challenge with courage and determination. It can be heard as a rallying cry in sports, but also in everyday life when people need a boost of morale before tackling something difficult or unpleasant together.
Today, the heart is most commonly associated with love, but in the Middle Ages it was primarily seen as the symbol of courage, strength and bravery. This is why French still has expressions such as un cœur vaillant (a brave heart). Although the exact origin of haut les cœurs is unknown, it is an old expression.
Be careful not to confuse this expression with avoir un haut-le-cœur. Although they look similar, these expressions have completely different meanings.
Avoir un haut-le-cœur is an old medical expression. Here, haut refers to something rising upward. It describes the upward movement from the stomach toward the throat that occurs when you feel like vomiting. In this case, cœur refers to an older way of describing the upper chest and stomach area, where nausea was believed to originate.
This older usage lingers in the modern phrase J'ai mal au cœur - which means 'I feel sick', not 'I feel like I have heart problems'.
If you have any worrying heart-related symptoms you would use either symptômes cardiaques, or crise cardiaque (heart attack).
Use it like this
Allez, haut les cœurs ! Tout va s'arranger. - Come on, chin up! Everything will work out.
Haut les cœurs ! Ce n'est qu'un contretemps. - Keep your spirits up! It's only a setback.
Après cette mauvaise nouvelle, il faut garder espoir. Haut les cœurs ! - After this bad news, we have to stay hopeful. Chin up!
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