avoir une grosse tête
Meaning: Being arrogant, conceited, or thinking highly of oneself.
Language: French
Literally: to have a big head
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Traced to carnival tradition, where processions were led by géants — enormous puppet figures carried on a bearer's shoulders, topped with an oversized mask meant to announce the figure's importance at a glance. Carnivals of this kind doubled as license to mock the powerful, so a grotesquely large head paraded at the front of the procession was as much a joke at the expense of self-important men as it was a mark of status. The metaphor rides on the old, false assumption that a bigger head holds a bigger brain; what survived is only the arrogance, unmoored from any actual belief about skull size.
Equivalents in other languages
- Estonian: Nina püsti käima — literally: To walk with your nose up
- Albanian: I rri gjel dikujt — literally: He stands like a rooster to someone
More idioms — Body & Senses
- 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.
- avoir une peur bleue — Being terrified or extremely frightened of something.
More French idioms
- 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.
- avoir un poisson d'avril — Being fooled by a prank or hoax on April 1st.
- être une girouette — Being inconsistent, constantly changing opinions or allegiances.
- faire la soupe à la grimace — Complaining or grumbling about something constantly.
From our tongue twisters
- 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.
- Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien. — The classic French 'ch' / 's' tangler.
- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? — A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.