avoir le trac
Meaning: Feeling nervous or anxious before a performance or important event.
Language: French
Literally: to have the stage fright
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: 19th-century theater slang, and trac itself is older and murkier than the stage fright it now names. Three families of explanation compete. The Trésor de la langue française reaches for a purely expressive root, trak-, first imitating the sound of footsteps and then the sudden jolt of someone startled by fear. A second theory borrows trach from Romani, itself traced to Sanskrit trāsa, fright or terror. A third links it to a wider family of Slavic words for fear, such as Czech strach. Whichever is right, the word settled hardest in the theater, where the fear an actor feels facing an audience became its defining case.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- avoir une grosse tête — Being arrogant, conceited, or thinking highly of oneself.
- avoir la chair de poule — Experiencing fear, cold, or emotional reaction causing skin reaction.
- mettre son doigt sur la plaie — Identifying the exact problem or sensitive issue in a situation.
- faire ses dents — A baby is teething and developing their first teeth.
- avoir le compas dans l'oeil — Having excellent judgment of distance, measurement, or proportion.
- avoir les pieds qui démangent — Wanting to travel or move to a different place.
More French idioms
- faire la morte — Pretending not to notice something or ignoring a situation.
- manger ses paroles — Having to take back or admit one was wrong about something said.
- mettre l'eau à la bouche — Making someone crave or desire something through temptation.
- tremper son biscuit — Engaging in a brief romantic or intimate encounter.
- faire un bide — Experiencing complete failure or lack of success.
- crier sur les toits — Announcing something publicly that should remain secret.
From our untranslatable words
- L'esprit de l'escalier — Thinking of the perfect comeback only after the moment has passed — on your way down the…
- Terroir — The unique character that a place — its soil, climate and tradition — gives to a wine or…
- Râler — To complain and grumble with a certain national flair — a beloved French pastime.