Bouché à l'émeri
Meaning: Dense, obtuse, narrow-minded; incapable of understanding.
Language: French
Literally: Stoppered with emery
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Glass flasks were once sealed airtight by grinding both the stopper's outside and the neck's inside with emery, an abrasive, until the fit was perfect. The slang bouché, 'plugged', for stupid dates from the 18th century; the émeri variant appeared in the early 20th. The image is exact: nothing escapes such a vessel, but nothing gets in either.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Griller un feu — To drive through a traffic light that is red.
- Éclairer la lanterne de quelqu'un — To supply the missing detail that lets someone finally understand.
- Outre mesure — Excessively, unreasonably, to an unwarranted degree.
- Une nuit blanche — A sleepless night.
- Une parole d'évangile — An incontestable truth.
- Être aux abonnés absents — To be unreachable, or to fail to show up when needed.
More French idioms
- Être comme l'âne de Buridan — To be so paralyzed between two equally attractive options that you choose neither.
- Rire comme une baleine — To laugh uproariously, with your mouth wide open.
- Un vent à décorner les bœufs — A ferociously strong wind.
- La bave du crapaud n'atteint pas la blanche colombe — Insults from a contemptible source cannot touch the person they target.
- Savoir où le bât blesse — To know exactly where the real difficulty or sore point lies.
- Faire un bœuf — To improvise music together; to hold a jam session.
From our proverbs
- A buck's a buck — Money retains equal value regardless of its source or the circumstances under which it wa…
- A cat may look at a king — Even the humblest creature possesses the right to observe or question those of highest st…
- A creaking door hangs long on its hinges — Constant complaint or noise doesn't necessarily lead to ruin; persistence can outlast exp…
Loading the full interactive collection…