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What do the following mean?

mais je ne pourrai pas t'offrir ma titine.
Je veux elle ne pourra pas t'offrir sa titine.

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    I suggest you clarify in which context you have found these two sentences because "titine" can have different meanings. Are you also sure about the second sentence ? It is very ungrammatical.
    – Greg
    Jan 30, 2018 at 5:12
  • Thanks Greg, the context is a picture (selfie) of my girlfriend sent via text message with the "titine" phrase attached.For the second sentence, the response to the photo was playfully suggesting the picture was of her girlfriend not her.
    – Joel
    Jan 30, 2018 at 5:46
  • "Titine" in slang is usually an affectionate word for a car - which does not seem to make sense in the context you have described... Or it can be a nickname for first names ending with "tine" such as "Christine"... It might be just a private joke between the sender and your girlfriend ?
    – Greg
    Jan 30, 2018 at 5:56
  • For the 2nd sentence, as it is a text message, I guess the sender has dropped some punctuation marks. I read it as "Je veux, elle ne pourra pas s'offrir sa titine". "Je veux" used alone is a slang phrase that means "that's for sure". But that is my reading, I expect some other contributors may read it differently. It then means "but I can't give you my titine. For sure, she can't give you her titine". What titine means is still a mystery, yet. Sorry to suggest that, but do you think it may have a sexual innuendo ?
    – Greg
    Jan 30, 2018 at 6:03
  • Hi Greg, yeh i'm thinking it does.
    – Joel
    Jan 30, 2018 at 6:19

3 Answers 3

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People here have confused the word Titine with the word tetine. Tetine means teat or dummy.

Here titine probably means car, people who really like their car usually call it titine.

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This is difficult to answer without context - but I have heard 'titine' be used to refer to a dummy (British English) or pacifier (American English).

It is a contracted form of

une tétine

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  • Thanks eveyrone. It seems clear what it means. I'll close it out now.
    – Joel
    Jan 31, 2018 at 11:53
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EDIT: It is really down to the original questioner, je crois, to ask his girlfriend to clear it up. The best I can offer is that it's likely something along the lines of:

  • I can't offer you my car. I want her not to offer you her car.
  • I won't be able to give you my car. I want her not to give you her car.
  • I won't give you a ride. I hope she won't give you a ride either.

Si nous acceptons «titine» as «voiture», c'est simple. Mais @joel a indiqué dans les commentaires qu'il croit que le contexte pourrait être «insinuation sexuelle» [or should I just say «double entendre» here?], alors ...

Certainly in English we make occasional puns on “ride” to mean both a car and sexual activity, but I'm not able to speak for whether that's currently normal in French. But, a search for "French slang" and "titine" ...

Google says boobs.

Er, I'll rephrase.

I found this answer from Nawaq at the wordreference.com forum which suggests that titines can be used to refer to, well, norks¹.

Sein(s), poitrine (normal word), nichon(s)/nichonaille/nichonnasses, loloches (plural), boobs (the English word), eins (verlan de seins, always used in the plural), nibard(s)/nib(s), tétés (from téton "nipple"), obus (these are really big breasts), nénés, miches, roberts (not sure it's still used, really old), pare-chocs (I love this one but it's quite "offensive"), mamelles, pis (these are for cows "pis de vache", I picture a very old, not so pretty pair of breasts), airbags, titines, tétines, balcon (y a du monde au balcon, a generous pair of breasts), if you want to say something to a woman who have small breasts you can say that she's a "planche à pain" or that she has "oeufs au plat". gougoutte(e), lolos (childish), loches (I think these are big breasts "t'as vu cette grosse paire de loches ?!"), if you like fruits you can also say "ananas" and "pamplemousses" but it's not really slang I think, it's mostly old-fashioned (it comes from a song -- funny), melons, flotteurs (old-fashioned too), roploplos (old-fashioned too, sound really funny), micheton(s), signes extérieurs de richesse, boules, meules, tchoutches... there must be a ton of others but I think I'm gonna stop here.²

But again, I can't say for sure which meaning is intended.

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  • ¹ My late father coined what I believe to be the shortest cryptic crossword clue for knockers, which read, Flipping ’eck! Norks! Jan 31, 2018 at 3:08
  • ² Last phrase of the quotation from the post reminded me slightly of the Coda to Tom Lehrer’s The Elements. Jan 31, 2018 at 3:09
  • It's quite weird to use it then in the singular. If it was some sort of sexual teasing, I would rather expect a girl to use te plural and say something like "je ne pourrai pas t'offrir mes titines/nénés/nibards/nichons". Why just ONE "boob" ?
    – Greg
    Jan 31, 2018 at 5:08
  • Well, offrir la titine would presumably refer to breast-feeding? Jan 31, 2018 at 11:19
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    About your comment on "ride": I can't think of such "sexual" metaphors in French, where riding a car hints at sex intercourse. Such double-entendre would be done with verbs such as prendre, tirer or emballer (sic!).
    – Greg
    Jan 31, 2018 at 11:54

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