Bourrer le mou
Meaning: To feed someone lies; to try to con them.
Language: French
Literally: To stuff the soft part
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: A copy of the older slang bourrer le crâne (to stuff the skull), which means exactly the same and pictures a head being packed with nonsense — the emptier the skull, the more easily it fills. Bourrer le mou seems to date from the First World War, and works because mou is slang for the brain among other things: soft, in other words, which it is. The variant gonfler le mou (to inflate it) circulated too, on the reasoning that anyone filling you with that much nonsense is doing a great deal of pumping. Céline drew c'est du mou from it in 1936, meaning that is a lie.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Rouler des mécaniques — To swagger; to throw one's weight around.
- Se casser la margoulette — To come a cropper; to take a bad fall.
- Se faire du mouron — To worry oneself.
- 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.
More French idioms
- Enculer les mouches — To split hairs; to fuss over trivial detail. Vulgar.
- Être dans la mouise / Être dans la panade / Être dans la purée — To be broke and in real trouble.
- Faire le mariole — To show off; to play the smart aleck.
- Fumer la moquette — To be talking obvious nonsense; to be off one's head.
- Laisser pisser le mérinos — To let things take their course; to wait it out.
- Sauver les meubles — To salvage what matters from a disaster.
From our proverbs
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- Man is the head, but woman turns it. — Women's subtle influence often guides decisions that men believe they make independently.
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