The French language is full of proverbs and expressions that carry a cultural colour that is difficult to translate. Here are 20 French proverbs \u2014 often literally untranslatable \u2014 that embody a unique popular wisdom and illuminate French thinking. <\/p>\n
1. “Don’t sell the bear’s skin until you’ve killed it” \u2014 Avoid celebrating a victory before it’s won.
\n2. “Putting your two cents in” \u2014 Intervene where you haven’t been asked, often to complicate things.
\n3. “Call a spade a spade” \u2014 Tell it like it is, without euphemism.
\n4. “It’s not the sea to drink” \u2014 Reassure: the task is not insurmountable.
\n5. “We are not out of the woods” \u2014 Point out that the difficulties are far from over.
\n6. “The carrots are cooked” \u2014 Seeing that there is no hope, that the situation is irreversible.
\n7. “Looking for noon to two o’clock” \u2014 Complicating one’s life by looking for non-existent problems.
\n8. “Beating around the bush” \u2014 Hesitating to bring up a sensitive topic directly.
\n9. “Putting down a rabbit” \u2014 Not showing up for an appointment without warning.
\n10. “Having your ass between two chairs” \u2014 Being indecisive, not choosing between two options.
\n11. “To fall into the apples” \u2014 To faint; A pictorial and very French expression.
\n12. “To be dressed up” \u2014 To be elegantly dressed for a special occasion.
\n13. “Drowning the fish” \u2014 To deliberately confuse to avoid a subject.
\n14. “Catching the fly” \u2014 Getting offended very quickly for little things.
\n15. “Telling salads” \u2014 Making up stories, lying, or embellishing reality.
\n16. “Tighten your belt” \u2014 Cut back on spending in difficult times.
\n17. “To have a sharp tongue” \u2014 To speak a lot and without restraint.
\n18. “To have a hair in your hand” \u2014 To be very lazy, to refuse work.
\n19. “Sparing the goat and the cabbage” \u2014 Trying to satisfy two opposing parties at the same time.
\n20. “Being soupy” \u2014 Getting angry very quickly, jumping easily to anger.<\/p>\n
These proverbs, sometimes absurd for a non-French-speaker, reflect a short and colourful art of saying that distinguishes French. Incorporate them into your conversations to enrich your vocabulary and better understand French folk humor and wisdom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The French language is full of proverbs and expressions that carry a cultural colour that is difficult to translate. Here are 20 French proverbs \u2014 often literally untranslatable \u2014 that embody a unique popular wisdom and illuminate French thinking. 1. “Don’t sell the bear’s skin until you’ve killed it” \u2014 Avoid celebrating a victory before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-french-language-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professeursdefrancais.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}