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French · phrasebook

How to say good afternoon in French

Good afternoon in French is bon après-midi. It is a wish you make when you leave: have a good afternoon. As a greeting on arrival, the afternoon still uses bonjour.

Aurélien CuvelierAurélien CuvelierSep 19, 2026
bon après-midi
good afternoon
anyone

The ways to say it

bon après-midi: good afternoon, anyone

How to use it

Both exchanges below are partings. In the first, a teenager heads back to school and says it to his mother, who returns it. In the second, a client leaving an office says it with a title, and gets it back with a see you Monday.

Watch out

Bon après-midi carries a liaison: the last letter of the first word sounds at the start of the next one. The tie in the examples marks it, with the sound under it.

In a real conversation

Each exchange is a line and its reply. Greyed letters are written and not pronounced. A tie marks a liaison, with the sound you hear under it. A label under a verb names its tense when it is not the present.

Je retourne au lycée. Bon après-midi, maman ! I'm going back to school. Have a good afternoon, Mum!

Bon après-midi, mon chéri ! Travaille bien. Have a good afternoon, sweetheart! Work hard.

Merci, je reviens lundi. Bon après-midi, madame ! Thanks, I'm coming back on Monday. Have a good afternoon, madam!

Merci à vous. Bon après-midi et à lundi ! Thank you. Have a good afternoon, and see you Monday!

Questions people ask

Do French people greet with bon après-midi?
No. They greet with bonjour all afternoon and say bon après-midi when they part.
Is bon après-midi formal?
It is neutral. It contains no tu and no vous, so it suits a parent and a client alike.

More French phrases

Each one with its tu and vous forms, its register and real exchanges.

The whole French phrasebook on one page ›

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Aurélien Cuvelier

Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck, the app that teaches Russian and French words in context. Each course follows the official proficiency word lists and a frequency corpus for its language, and every word comes with real, annotated example sentences.

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