French idioms aren’t just linguistic quirks – they’re frozen fragments of history. Behind every expression figée lies a forgotten scandal, obsolete custom, or dark joke that made 14th-century Parisians chuckle. Here are the untold stories behind phrases you’ll hear in modern cafés and boardrooms.
1. “Poser un lapin” (To stand someone up)
This phrase for standing someone up literally means “to put down a rabbit”. Its origins trace back to 19th-century brothels, where sex workers would sometimes accept payment in rabbits (then a luxury food item) from clients who couldn’t afford cash. Unscrupulous workers began accepting rabbits from multiple men for the same time slot, leaving some clients waiting indefinitely with their furry bribes.
Poser un lapin
/po.ze.ʁ‿œ̃ la.pɛ̃/“To stand someone up”
2. “Avoir le cafard” (To feel depressed)
Meaning “to have the cockroach”, this phrase entered French via Charles Baudelaire’s 1857 poem Les Fleurs du Mal, where the insect symbolised gnawing existential dread. The connection deepened during the 1870 Siege of Paris, when starving residents resorted to eating zoo animals and, allegedly, cockroaches – making the phrase literally true for some.
3. “Ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard” (It’s nothing special)
Translating as “it doesn’t break three legs of a duck”, this bizarre phrase comes from rural hunting slang. Ducks shot in flight would often break one leg upon hitting the ground. Hitting one so precisely that it broke three legs (an anatomical impossibility) became ironic hunter’s hyperbole for an unremarkable feat.
4. “Les carottes sont cuites” (The situation is hopeless)
“The carrots are cooked” sounds like a culinary observation, but its dark meaning emerged in WWII Resistance circles. Cooking carrots was the last task prisoners performed before Nazi executions at Fresnes Prison. The phrase became code for imminent arrest or death, later generalising to any doomed scenario.
- Related phrase: Mettre des bâtons dans les roues (to put sticks in the wheels) – another Resistance-era term for sabotage, now meaning to obstruct
5. “Tomber dans les pommes” (To faint)
Before meaning “to fall into the apples”, this phrase appeared in 1889 as tomber dans les pâmes (from pâmoison, an archaic term for swooning). The similar-sounding pommes (apples) eventually replaced the obscure word through a linguistic process called folk etymology – much like English “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.
6. “Se faire rouler dans la farine” (To be duped)
“To be rolled in flour” sounds like a bizarre baking accident, but refers to 18th-century con artistry. Dishonest merchants would sprinkle flour over rotten meat to disguise its smell and appearance. The phrase became shorthand for any elaborate deception, surviving long after the scam itself faded.
| Idiom | Literal Meaning | Era of Origin |
|---|---|---|
| Poser un lapin | Put down a rabbit | 19th century |
| Les carottes sont cuites | The carrots are cooked | 1940s |
| Se faire rouler dans la farine | To be rolled in flour | 1700s |
7. “Chercher midi à quatorze heures” (To overcomplicate things)
This phrase (“to look for noon at 2pm”) originates from sundial culture. Before mechanical clocks, sundials showed noon when the sun was directly overhead. Trying to find “noon” at any other time was obviously futile – making this the medieval equivalent of “over-engineering a solution”.
8. “Avoir un poil dans la main” (To be lazy)
“To have a hair in one’s hand” sounds like a trivial complaint, but it’s actually a brutal insult dating to when manual labour determined survival. The “hair” was supposedly caused by prolonged inactivity – the hand had grown soft and hairy from disuse, unlike the calloused hands of workers.
9. “Sauter du coq à l’âne” (To change topics abruptly)
“To jump from the rooster to the donkey” comes from medieval bestiaries – books describing animals’ symbolic meanings. Roosters represented vigilance (from crowing at dawn), while donkeys symbolised stupidity. Jumping between these opposite concepts became shorthand for nonsensical conversation leaps.
10. “En faire tout un fromage” (To make a big deal out of nothing)
France’s cheese obsession surfaces in this idiom (“to make a whole cheese out of it”). It references the elaborate process of transforming simple milk into hundreds of complex cheeses – an apt metaphor for overcomplicating minor issues.
Next time you hear these phrases, remember: you’re not just speaking French – you’re resurrecting centuries of inside jokes, historical traumas, and forgotten scandals. As the French say, plus ça change...
