Allumer ses quinquets
Meaning: To open one's eyes and pay attention.
Language: French
Literally: To light one's quinquets
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: The quinquet was an oil lamp with a hollow wick that burned far brighter than a candle, named after the pharmacist who marketed it around 1780. Calling eyes lamps is old; naming the model is the French touch.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Couper le sifflet à quelqu'un — To silence someone abruptly, usually with an unanswerable point.
- Être dans ses petits souliers — To be acutely ill at ease.
- Mordre la poussière — To be defeated; to fall.
- Avoir plus d'un tour dans son sac — To have resources in reserve.
- Vider son sac — To say everything one has been holding back.
- À tue-tête — At the top of one's voice.
More French idioms
- De la poudre de perlimpinpin — A worthless remedy sold with great confidence.
- Un lit de Procuste — A standard imposed regardless of what it does to the thing being measured.
- Le rocher de Sisyphe — A labor that must be repeated forever and never completes.
- Le supplice de Tantale — Having what one wants permanently in sight and permanently out of reach.
- Une solution de continuité — A break or gap — not, despite appearances, a solution to anything.
- Demain, on rase gratis — A promise perpetually postponed.
From our compliments & insults
- Tu as de la répartie — You're brilliantly quick-witted — always ready with the perfect comeback.
- T'as pas inventé le fil à couper le beurre — You're not exactly a genius — the wire to cut butter is about the most obvious tool imagi…
- Tête de mule — An impossibly stubborn person who refuses to change their mind no matter what.
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