À bon escient
Meaning: Advisedly; with proper judgment about when to do it.
Language: French
Literally: With good knowing
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Escient descends from Latin sciens, knowing, and appears in modern French only in this phrase and its opposite, à mauvais escient. It is about timing and appropriateness rather than being correct.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Des espèces sonnantes et trébuchantes — Hard cash, as opposed to promises or credit.
- D'estoc et de taille — With everything one has, by every available means.
- Ne connaître ni d'Ève ni d'Adam — Not to know someone at all.
- Fauché comme les blés — Completely broke.
- S'inscrire en faux — To formally deny something and challenge its truth.
- Cherchez la femme — There is a woman behind this somewhere.
More French idioms
- Jeter l'argent par les fenêtres — To spend recklessly and pointlessly.
- Croire dur comme fer — To believe something with complete and unshakeable conviction.
- Le fer de lance — The leading element of an effort; the part that goes in first.
- Avoir le feu sacré — To be driven by genuine, burning vocation.
- Être tout feu tout flamme — To be full of ardent enthusiasm.
- Faire fi de quelque chose — To scorn something; to dismiss it as beneath notice.
From our proverbs
- Do not buy a pig in a poke. — Inspecting merchandise before purchase prevents you from paying for defective or worthles…
- Let the buyer look out for himself. — Purchasers bear responsibility for inspecting goods carefully before buying, not sellers…
- In a calm sea every man is a pilot. — Fair conditions mask incompetence; true skill emerges only when facing genuine difficulty.
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