Streaming and subscriptions in French

Le visionnage en rafale is « binge-watching », and the two names are borrowed from opposite corners of life. English took its picture from appetite. A « binge » was a drinking bout long before it was anything else, and the noun has kept that company ever since: « binge drinking », « binge eating », and then, once whole series began arriving at once, « binge-watching ». « To binge on something » still means to take in far too much of it in one sitting, and the word carries a faint wince with it. French reached instead for the weather and a weapon. Une rafale is a gust — une rafale de vent turns an umbrella inside out — and it is a burst of automatic fire: tirer par rafales, une rafale de mitraillette. From there it covers anything that arrives fast and without gaps, as in une rafale de questions. So en rafale says nothing at all about swallowing: it says the episodes come at you one behind another with no pause left between them. The grammar differs too — English makes a verb of it, French an adverbial tail: il regarde la série en rafale.