Avoir un nom à coucher dehors
Meaning: To have a name nobody can pronounce or remember.
Language: French
Literally: To have a name to sleep outdoors with
Category: Daily Life
Origin: A hotel today does not care what you are called. An inn did. Innkeepers were suspicious by trade, and after dark a traveler seeking a bed had to give his surname first — and a name that did not sound reassuringly Christian was a good way to be turned away and sent to sleep in the stable. Once admitted, dress and the standing of the name decided whether you got a good room or a bad one. With inns far rarer than hotels are now, and no realistic prospect of reaching the next one, a man with a name like that had every reason to travel with something warm to sleep in. The longer variant un nom à coucher dehors avec un billet de logement refers to the wartime billeting order that obliged a householder to lodge the soldier carrying it, but it looks bolted on to an expression that already existed.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Être dans les petits papiers de quelqu'un — To be in someone's good books; to enjoy their favor.
- Faire un pataquès — To make a clumsy verbal slip, or a blunder generally; also, to make an enormous fuss over…
- Patin couffin — And so on and so forth; et cetera.
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
- Avoir d'autres chats à fouetter — To have more important things to do.
- Avoir le cul entre deux chaises — To be indecisive, caught between two options.
More French idioms
- Coûter la peau des fesses / Coûter les yeux de la tête — To cost an absolute fortune.
- Rouler un patin / Rouler une galoche — To kiss deeply, with tongue.
- Ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard — It's nothing special or impressive.
- C'est comme pisser dans un violon — A completely pointless effort.
- Avoir le cafard — To feel depressed or down.
- Poser un lapin — To stand someone up on a date.
From our untranslatable words
- Épanouissement — The full flourishing of a person — blooming into your most complete, radiant self. More t…
- Ressourcement — The act of returning to one's roots or origins to find renewal — going back to a place, t…
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
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