In a speech on Thursday, Emmanuel Macron angered many of his compatriots by declaring: “La démocratie est le système le plus bottom up de la terre” (“Democracy is the most bottom-up system in the world”). He meant “inclusive”, “participatory” or “non-elitist”. But there is a phrase for that concept in French: it’s démocratie ascendante. There’s also one for English words in French: franglais.

From “basket” and “chewing gum” to “blockbusters” and “bestsellers”, English words are common in my language. The film industry regularly “translates” English film titles using another English phrase, usually more transparent, to look “cool” (for instance, Silver Linings Playbook became Happiness Therapy).

But to many French people, “bottom up” is more confusing: was Macron making a risqué joke? Was it “bottoms up” (or “cul sec” in French)? His words, coming only days after he had launched a grand plan to promote the French language, were heavily criticised. “This sentence devalues French-speaking democracy,” Bernard Pivot, a fervent defender of the French language, tweeted.

On the Today programme on Friday, the French ambassador to the UN, François Delattre, defended Macron’s choice of words, declaring that although “bottom up” is not exactly proper French, “it’s like weekend, rugby, football, and so on”.

He was right in the sense that in a typical conversation among friends, franglais is common: – Tu fais quoi ce weekend? (“What are you doing this weekend?”)

– Je joue au foot. (“Playing football.”)

– Cool!

Macron has never hidden his love for franglais: many on la team présidentielle refer to him as le boss.

English words like weekend are permitted because there is no real equivalent (no one says fin de semaine) or because, like cool, they’re trendy (it’s cooler to say cool than to say sympa).

But bottom up would never come up in a casual chat: it crosses the fine line between English words familiar from pop culture and those derived from management jargon, like brainstorming or updater.

Macron has never hidden his love for franglais: his campaign’s volunteers were les helpers and many on la team présidentielle refer to him as le boss. And it is nice, for a change, to have a president who can pronounce English words correctly, unlike his predecessors François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. Macron’s overuse of English, however, his desire for an économie disruptive and a start-up nation, flirts with caricature. Sure enough, “Bottom up” was quickly used against him: “strikes are the most bottom up way to be heard”, someone joked in support of the French public sector’s current strikes. “Decrees are very bottom up”, wrote another, criticising the government’s tendency to pass laws by decree, like the labour law reform last autumn.

And it’s true his actions don’t always seem to reflect the “bottom up” rhetoric. In November, 100 members of his party, La République En Marche!, left because of a “lack of democracy”. The head of the En Marche! parliamentary group was elected by default, since he was the sole candidate.

But to criticise Macron’s words, French people had to understand them first. Sure, to entrepreneurs and millennials it makes sense. But what about French people who don’t need English for work, or are simply older than the typical start-upper?

I asked my family – teachers living in rural eastern France – if they understood the president. My father, 60, whose English is good because he regularly writes letters for Amnesty International, was the only one who immediately got it. My mother, 54, was confused. “Bottom up?!” she said. “I don’t know.” She goes to weekly English classes, but prepositions are tricky for beginners and expressions combining them with other words even more so. My grandfather, 86, struggled too: “‘Bottom’ is like the foot of a tree,” he said, “and ‘up’ is when it grows?” With context, and five minutes, he understood – but in a speech, he wouldn’t have done.

In the end, the final say on the matter was had by my grandmother, 82: “English words in French, I hate them. I don’t understand and it pisses me off.”

• Pauline Bock is a French journalist based in Britain