Feelings by degree in French

Sixteenth on this list is the one entry that is not an adjective, and it carries a rule worth more than the phrase itself. English says « to have a guilty conscience », with an article that cannot be dropped. French says avoir mauvaise conscience, with no article at all, and putting one in is what gives a sentence away as translated. The same pattern runs through every state the language treats as a condition rather than as a thing: avoir faim, avoir soif, avoir peur, avoir honte, avoir sommeil, avoir raison, avoir tort. The noun goes bare, and an adjective may still slip in front of it: avoir bonne mémoire, avoir mauvaise mine, and here avoir bonne conscience for the opposite state. Two things follow. To intensify one of these you put très straight before the bare noun — j’ai très faim, il a très peur — which is the one corner of the language where très qualifies a noun instead of an adjective. And because the word is a noun, the verb is avoir and never être: an English speaker reaching for « she is » has already left French behind.