W

wagon n. m. 1 ‘Prozzy’, prostitute. 2 Accrocher les wagons: To ‘throw up’, to ‘puke’, to vomit. wagonnet n. m. Recharger les wagonnets (ofglasses): To ‘set ‘em up again’, to fill them up again. Allez, on recharge les wagonnets, et on se casse! O.K., let’s have a refill and then we’ll head for home! Wagram Proper name. (abbr. Salle Wagram): This vast hall, a popular venue for boxing and wrestling matches, pop concerts and political rallies is, as the name suggests, situated on the Avenue Wagram in Paris. walk-over n. m. ‘Push-over’, easy task. (The word stems from the languagc of horse-racing, a walk-over being a race where for one reason or another only one contender is left, who to win must complete the course unopposed.) wallace n. f. (abbr. fontaine Wallace): Paris drinking fountain. (Sir Richard Wallace, the English philanthropist, 1818-90, gained everlasting eponymous fame by donating fifty small pushbutton water-dispensing fountains to the French capital.) waterloo n. m. 1 Crushing and unexpected setback. 2 Patch of bad luck. On était en plein waterloo! It was just one thing after another! (Obviously the heavy military defeat inflicted on Napoleon on 18 June 1815 is reflected in the colloquial meanings of the word. The same can be said of Trafalgar.) waters n. m. pl. Les waters: ‘The bog’, the W.C. (The word is a truncation of water-closet and has a numbcr of near-miss phonetic representations: ouatères, vatères, indicative of the speaker’s literacy.)