À huis clos
Meaning: In closed session, with the public excluded.
Language: French
Literally: Behind closed door
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Huis is an old French word for door, from Latin ostium, surviving only in this phrase and in huissier, the usher who keeps it. It remains the formal legal term for a hearing held in camera.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Mettre à l'index — To blacklist something or exclude it from acceptable use.
- Un violon d'Ingres — A serious passion pursued outside one's actual profession.
- Un coup de Jarnac — An unexpected decisive stroke, delivered within the rules but not quite sportingly.
- Jeux de mains, jeux de vilains — Horseplay ends badly.
- On ne peut être juge et partie — Nobody may rule on a matter in which they have an interest.
- Un jugement de Salomon — A ruling of great wisdom that exposes the truth by testing it.
More French idioms
- C'est kif-kif — It makes no difference at all.
- Une fine lame — A highly skilled practitioner.
- Sur l'air des lampions — Chanted rhythmically on three insistent notes, as a crowd does.
- Perdre son latin — To be completely baffled by something.
- Se reposer sur ses lauriers — To coast on past achievements instead of continuing to work.
- Au pied de la lettre / À la lettre — Literally, in the strictest sense.
From our tongue twisters
- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? — A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.
- Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès. — An 's' / 'si' minefield.
- Dans ta tente ta tante t'attend. — A gentle 'ta / ten / tan / t'' warm-up that sounds faster than it reads.
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