Cultural Significance

Verlan is clearly more ubiquitous with the younger lot. Therefore it is used a lot in contexts of Sex, Drugs and slightly more vulgar references. It is not advisable to use Verlan in your day to day formal set up of communication- like at work, or whilst running your errands. But it could definitely break the ice with your cool young French friends whom you have known for a suffciently long time. Verlan is also heavily used in French hip hop and Rap music. The very popular Belgian Artist- "Stromae" has his name verlanized from the word "Maestro".

Trust me it can get more complicated…!

There exists a reversed version of Verlan called Re-verlan is used for just certain words. These are verlan words reversed again.

For example:

Flic ( slang for policeman) becomes keuf in Verlan and feuck in Re-verlan

There are also a few words whose meaning changes from the original form on conversion into Verlan.

For example:

Méchant , which means mean in the original form becomes chanmé (which means amazing or awesome in Verlan).