la dingue

I recently learned the adj. "dingue" as crazy. I just came across the following sentence in a podcast:

"Sa mère a été dépisté pour la dingue." I didn't find "la dingue" in my dictionary but I believe the sentence means "His mother was screened for dementia." I just learned the word "dépister" which can mean "to screen" but also "to detect." So perhaps the sentence is saying that his mother was diagnosed as having dementia.

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on August 16, 2012 at 10:14pm

It could well be Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease according to this discussion

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2024493

I think it is the human disease that can be caught from eating scrapie infected sheep .

That (scrapie) is ,I think , closely related to BSE , or Mad Cow Disease.

That might explain why it is called La Dingue, since "dingue" means "mad" in French.

I am not sure if Dengue (another disease) is any way connected since Google Translation seems to give that as a translation (maybe wrongly).

I am not up to speed on dépister (screen or detect)

▶ Reply

EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on August 17, 2012 at 7:58pm

I think dépister simply means diagnosed.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by joeeoj on August 20, 2012 at 12:28am

the word "dingue" is wrong typed in the sentence : you should read "dengue". a tropical mosquito bites you, you get "dengue", a fever that drives you crazy. "depister" means to find the true object/person at the end of the track (piste).