Avoir les coudées franches
Meaning: To have complete freedom of action.
Language: French
Literally: To have free elbow-lengths
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: The coudée was a cubit, the forearm's length, and having them franches meant having enough clear space to move your arms without obstruction. The measurement is medieval; the sense of latitude is unchanged.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Battre sa coulpe — To publicly acknowledge one's own wrongdoing.
- Le petit doigt sur la couture du pantalon — Standing rigidly to attention; obeying without question.
- Ôter une épine du pied à quelqu'un — To relieve someone of a persistent difficulty.
- Un écorché vif — Someone painfully hypersensitive to everything around them.
- L'huile de coude — Hard physical effort; elbow grease.
- Couper l'herbe sous le pied de quelqu'un — To forestall someone by acting first.
More French idioms
- Se croire sorti de la cuisse de Jupiter — To have an absurdly high opinion of one's own importance.
- Le tonneau des Danaïdes — A hopeless undertaking that consumes everything and is never finished.
- Au diable vauvert — Miles from anywhere; the back of beyond.
- Il n'y a pas le feu au lac — There's no rush.
- Par l'opération du Saint-Esprit — By some unexplained miracle — said sarcastically of something nobody will account for.
- Au creux de la vague — At a low point, with the expectation that things will rise again.
From our tongue twisters
- Seize chaises sèches sur seize arches sèches. — A relentless collision of 'sei', 'sèch', and 's' — the tongue can't find traction.
- Un beau ver vert dans un verre vert verra un ver vert. — Ver (worm), vert (green), and verre (glass) are near-homophones — distinguishing them at…
- Didon dîna, dit-on, du dos d'un dodu dindon dont le dodu dos dodine. — A 'd' / 'din' / 'dod' avalanche that seems designed to jam the tongue in third gear.
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