Avoir un pet de travers
Meaning: To be slightly unwell, or simply in a foul mood.
Language: French
Literally: To have a fart sideways
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Pet arrives in the 12th century from Latin peditum, off the verb pedere, and means exactly what it means. By the 13th it had also taken the figurative sense of a thing of no value at all — for reasons nobody explains — which is what stands behind ne pas valoir un pet, later extended with an animal, most often the rabbit. The expression itself needs no scholarship: anyone who has had trapped wind knows how thoroughly it can sour an afternoon, and that is enough to have produced, in the first half of the 20th century, a way of accounting for someone who is either mildly ill or simply impossible to be around.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Pisser dans sa culotte / Pisser dans son froc — To laugh helplessly — or, oppositely, to be terrified.
- Se chatouiller le poireau / S'astiquer la colonne — To masturbate, said of a man. Vulgar.
- Tomber dans les pommes — Suddenly losing consciousness — possibly derived from the older expression 'être dans les…
- Avoir la moutarde qui monte au nez — To be getting angry.
- Couper les cheveux en quatre — To over-analyze or split hairs.
- Se regarder le nombril — To be self-centered or narcissistic.
More French idioms
- Pédé comme un phoque — Said of a man: unmistakably gay. *Pédé* is a homophobic slur and the phrase is offensive.
- Tailler une pipe — To perform fellatio. Vulgar.
- Être à côté de la plaque — To be wide of the mark; to answer something other than the question asked.
- Ça va durer trois plombes — It's going to take hours.
- Avoir la poisse — To have persistent, clinging bad luck.
- Avoir un coup de pompe — To be hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion.
From our proverbs
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- Home is home, be it ever so homely. — Comfort and belonging matter more than outward appearance or grandeur.
- Honesty is the best policy; but he who acts on this principle is not an honest man. — Truly honest people don't practice honesty as calculated strategy; they act righteously r…
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