FrenchBrûler ses dernières cartouches
Meaning: to exhaust one's final resources or use one's last arguments in desperation.
Literally: To burn one's last cartridges
Example: “Le candidat a brûlé ses dernières cartouches lors du débat final.” — The candidate used up his last ammunition in the final debate.
English equivalent: To play one's last card
Equivalents in other languages
English: play one's last card
Origin: A cartridge is brûlée (burned) when it is fired, because the powder inside burns. Firing your last rounds leaves you nothing to defend yourself with, so the phrase means a final, desperate effort, or one's last arguments. The image had a famous real counterpart: at Bazeilles in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, French marine infantry held a house until their ammunition ran out, a scene Alphonse de Neuville painted in 1873 as Les Dernières Cartouches. Whether that episode fixed the phrase is not documented.
More French idioms
- Ne s’être pas regardé to judge others harshly while being blind to one's own equal or greater faults.
- Ne pas tourner rond to be unwell or not functioning properly.
- Prendre le maquis To go into hiding or join a resistance movement to escape authority or persecution.
- Ne pas en croire ses oreilles To be startled or disbelieving upon hearing something astonishing.
- Se composer le visage To adopt a serious or carefully studied expression suited to the circumstances.
- Être de mauvais poil To be in a bad mood or irritable disposition.
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- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.
- Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès. An 's' / 'si' minefield.
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