FrenchAvoir la poisse
Meaning: To have persistent, clinging bad luck.
Literally: To have the pitch
Example: “Crevaison, pluie, puis train annulé : j'ai la poisse aujourd'hui.” — A flat tire, rain, then a canceled train: I'm dogged by bad luck today.
Origin: Poix was pitch — a viscous glue boiled from pine or fir resin, or from wood tar. It produced the verb poisser, to coat with pitch, in the 16th century, and la poisse was drawn from that verb with its figurative sense of bad luck at the start of the 20th. The image is the material itself: pitch is a thing you cannot get off you, which is exactly the complaint being made about the run of luck. Gaston Esnault reports the phrase surfacing first in the slang of racing cyclists.
More French idioms
- Manger sur le pouce To eat in a hurry, standing up.
- Cucul la praline Twee; soppy; embarrassingly naive.
- Pour des prunes For nothing; in vain.
- Fait comme un rat Trapped, with no way out.
- Se magner la rondelle To get a move on. Vulgar.
- Rôtir le balai To live in poverty — and later, to live a life of debauchery.
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