Avoir du mal à joindre les deux bouts

Struggling to join both ends

• Having financial difficulties, and not being able to keep to a budget.

• Dates back to the 16th century, in French aristocracy when noblemen could not tie their napkins around their necks because of the size of the ruffs they wore.

Mettre la charrue avant les bœufs

To put the plow before the ox

• To start a task by the end, to not respect the order of things.

• English equivalent : "to put the cart before the horse".

• This expression stems from the logic of the chain of events, by putting the animal supposed to pull the cart behind it, the device is completely useless.

Avoir un chat dans la gorge

To have a cat in your throat

• Having a sore throat.

• In English, they also speak about having a toad in your throat.

• the expression refers of the purring of the cat, when you have a sore throat it’s like the purring of a cat.

Avoir la tête dans les nuages

Having one’s head in the cloud

• when you are very distracted.

• when you have your head in the clods, it means like we are not at the same place as people around you, you think of somethings totally different.

Mettre les pieds dans le plat

To put the feet in the plate

• clumsily approaching a sensitive subject.

• This expression come from Provence, where in the 18th century a lot of different cultures (and different languages) were mixed together. At that time “le plat” didn’t mean the plate but more like a mud. So, when the children who didn’t spoke French at that time had to thanks to school, it was for them like wading through the mud. The meaning behind the expression then started to change a bit through the ages.

Poser un lapin

To land a rabbit

• When you have an appointment, but you don’t show up.

• Previously, in French, "un lapin" referred to a late payment. The meaning has evolved over time.

Donner sa langue au chat

To give one’s tongue to the cat

• To give up.

• This expression was before « mettre quelque chose dans l’oreille d’un chat” which mean literally: to put something in the cat’s ear. It was first used by the writer George Sand, and it meaned that you say a secret who is destined to be forgot just as as soon as it was spoken, the cat became the one to whom we rely when we can’t find a solution.

Chercher midi à quatorze heures

Looking for noon at two o’clock

• To look for a problem when there is none.

• It just means that you are looking for something impossible, illogical when everything is fine.

Raconter des salades

Telling salads

• Telling lies.

• A salad is a composition of some various, colored and non-homogeneous things. So, this evokes confusion, something strange and illogical, sometimes, like a lie.

Avoir le cafard

Having the cockroach

• Being sad, depressed.

• This expression was first used by the poet Charles Beaudelaire in “Les fleurs du mal” who made a link between the disgusting insect that is the cockroach and a dark and melancholic state.