Acheter chat en poche
Meaning: To buy something sight unseen, and be cheated.
Language: French
Literally: To buy a cat in a bag
Category: Animals
Origin: From the medieval market trick of selling a cat in a closed sack to a buyer who believed he was getting a suckling pig. English preserves both halves of the same swindle in 'a pig in a poke' and 'letting the cat out of the bag'.
More idioms — Animals
- Il n'y a pas un chat — There is nobody around at all.
- À cheval donné on ne regarde pas les dents — Do not find fault with a gift.
- Monter sur ses grands chevaux — To take offense and react with indignant superiority.
- Un cheval de Troie — A gift or arrangement that conceals a hostile purpose.
- C'est le chien de Jean de Nivelle — Said of someone who makes himself scarce precisely when he is called.
- Les chiens ne font pas des chats — Children inevitably resemble their parents.
More French idioms
- Les chiens aboient et la caravane passe — Criticism from bystanders does not stop those who are getting on with it.
- Ne pas attacher son chien avec des saucisses — To be extremely tight-fisted.
- Un temps de chien — Filthy, miserable weather.
- Mettre les bouchées doubles — To work twice as hard in order to catch up.
- La dive bouteille — Wine, treated with mock reverence.
- Boire le calice jusqu'à la lie — To endure an ordeal all the way to its most humiliating end.
From our untranslatable words
- Épanouissement — The full flourishing of a person — blooming into your most complete, radiant self. More t…
- Ressourcement — The act of returning to one's roots or origins to find renewal — going back to a place, t…
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
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