À tire-larigot

Literally: At pull-the-larigot

Example: “Au mariage, le champagne coulait à tire-larigot.” — At the wedding, champagne flowed by the bucketload.

English equivalent: By the bucketload

Origin: It surfaces early in the 16th century, and for a long time it attached to one verb only: boire. Tirer is to draw liquid out of its container — wine from the cask — and à tire meant without pause, in one go. Which leaves the larigot, and the only firm fact about a larigot is that it was a small flute. From there the guesses fan out. Flutists had a centuries-old reputation as prodigious drinkers; there was an older phrase, flûter pour le bourgeois, meaning to drink like a fish; the period was fond of bawdy double meanings and tirer sur une flûte was never going to escape one; or perhaps the bottle the drinker draws from was simply flute-shaped. None of it explains why the larigot won out over à tire-flûte or à tire-pipeau. A rival account, from Pierre-Marie Quitard in 1842, drops the flute entirely: Rouen cathedral held a ten-ton bell called La Rigaud, and the men hauling on its ropes worked up such a thirst that they drank à tire la Rigaud. Ten tons is a persuasive detail.