Aller au charbon
Meaning: To head off to work; to steel oneself for something disagreeable.
Language: French
Literally: To go to the coal
Category: Daily Life
Origin: The obvious reading is a miner hauling sacks, and it is the wrong one. Gaston Esnault placed the phrase in Paris prostitution around the 1930s, where going to the coal meant holding a conventional job rather than living off the trade. Criminal slang borrowed it for honest work, and after the war theater people used it for emptying yourself on stage. Only from the 1980s did it settle into meaning ordinary work.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Passer l'arme à gauche — To die.
- La réponse du berger à la bergère — The retort that ends an argument for good; also, giving someone exactly what they gave yo…
- Know where the shoe pinches — To know exactly where the real trouble lies.
- C'est dans mes cordes — It is within my competence; I can handle that.
- Filer un mauvais coton — To be going downhill — in health, or in one's situation generally.
- Tirer son coup — For a man, to have an orgasm. Vulgar.
More French idioms
- Couler un bronze — To defecate.
- Coûter un bras — To be outrageously expensive.
- Se cailler les miches — To be freezing cold.
- Chercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin — To search for something you have almost no chance of finding, because the thing is tiny a…
- Avoir le bourdon — To feel low; to be in a melancholy mood.
- Bourré comme un coing — Completely drunk.
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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