FrenchBourrer le mou
Meaning: To feed someone lies; to try to con them.
Literally: To stuff the soft part
Example: “Arrête de me bourrer le mou, je sais que tu n'as jamais rencontré cette star.” — Stop feeding me a line; I know you've never met that star.
English equivalent: To feed someone a line
Equivalents in other languages
English: feed someone a line
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 French idioms
- Enculer les mouches To split hairs; to fuss over trivial detail. Vulgar.
- Être dans la mouise 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.
Explore another collection: Proverbs
Short sayings of timeless wisdom from more than 50 cultures, each with its meaning and origin.
- On ne fait pas boire un âne qui n'a pas soif You can't force someone to do what they don't want to do.
- Ne fais pas à autrui ce que tu ne voudrais pas qu'on te fasse Treat others as you would want to be treated.
- La beauté ne se mange pas en salade Good looks alone don't put food on the table or make a good partner.
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