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.

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 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.

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Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.

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