Cherchez la femme

"Cherchez la femme!" is a French phrase which literally means "Look for the woman!"

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It is a cliché of detective pulp fiction; when someone's wife has been murdered, when a man has a problem or is involved in a quarrel, one should search for a woman as the root cause of the trouble.

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The phrase has also come to mean, simply, "Look for the root cause of the problem!"

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In O Henry's story "Cherchez La Femme", includes the line:

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"Ah! yes, I know most time when those men lose money you say, 'Cherchez la femme'--there is somewhere the woman."

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The television series La Femme Nikita features the following line in it's opening credits:

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"Cherchez la femme, cherchez la femme...dans la nuit, dans la nuit." (Literally: "Look for the woman, look for the woman...into the night, into the night.")

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