A sincerity marker that signals authentic opinion — the phrase French speakers use to cut through politeness and say what they genuinely think.
En vrai is what French speakers reach for when they need you to know they're being completely real with you. It functions as a sincerity marker — the phrase you drop before saying what you actually think, or after making a point you want taken seriously. The literal translation "in true" barely captures what it does conversationally: it signals authentic opinion, cuts through politeness, marks the difference between what you're supposed to say and what you genuinely feel.
The phrase has existed in French slang since the 1800s, documented in argot dictionaries as traditional colloquial speech. But it experienced a dramatic revival in the 2020s through TikTok, where French creators naturally used it in their videos. Non-French speakers encountered it so frequently in viral content that they began actively learning it — not as optional slang, but as essential vocabulary for understanding contemporary French.
What makes en vrai interesting is what it reveals about how young people communicate now: the premium placed on authenticity, the need for linguistic markers that separate genuine opinion from performance. It spread across France, Quebec, Belgium, and French-speaking Africa not through a single viral moment, but through accumulated exposure — each TikTok video reinforcing that this is how you signal truth in French. The phrase became a citizenship test: use it naturally, and you understand contemporary French youth culture. Hesitate, and everyone knows you're outside looking in.