FrenchCrudeAvoir le cul bordé de nouilles
Meaning: To be outrageously lucky.
Literally: To have one's backside lined with noodles
Example: “Gagner deux fois au loto la même année, il a le cul bordé de nouilles !” — Winning the lottery twice in one year? He has the luck of the devil!
English equivalent: To have the luck of the devil
Other ways to say this
- French: Avoir une veine de cocu Literally: To have a cuckold's luck
English: have the luck of the devil
Origin: The link between the backside and luck is ordinary enough in French — avoir du cul is simply to be lucky — but the noodles are another matter, and nobody has settled them. They attach around 1950 in sports commentary, where a goalkeeper saved by the crossbar is said to have his backside lined with noodles. The phrase itself looks older, born in 1930s Marseille: a city given to chronic exaggeration, close to Italy and fond of pasta, where an existing expression for a lucky man could easily pick up a hyperbole like this one. A cruder account also circulates, resting on prison hierarchies and on the slang sense of nouille as penis, but there is no serious source behind it.
More French idioms
- Crever la dalle To be extremely hungry.
- Mi-figue, mi-raisin Torn between pleasure and displeasure; half in earnest, half in jest.
- Avoir la patate To be on great form; to be full of energy.
- Faire du gringue To chat someone up, insistently.
- Être gonflé To be recklessly bold — or, said with irritation, to have a great deal of nerve.
- Pas folle, la guêpe ! Said of someone shrewd enough not to be taken in.
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