Ça se bouscule au portillon
Meaning: There's a crush; also, crudely, of an urgent need to be sick.
Language: French
Literally: There's a scramble at the little gate
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Pure Paris métro, from the era when the ticket-puncher still had a job. Access to the platform ran through a gate that he closed as a train pulled in, so anyone still in the corridor who heard it coming broke into a run rather than lose the minutes until the next one — hence the scrimmage at the gate at rush hour. Behind the closed gate, meanwhile, a crowd built up stamping with impatience, and poured onto the platform when it opened again. That is the whole image, and it transfers to any dense impatient crowd: a queue at a stadium, an unexpected field of election candidates, traffic on a road, words coming out too fast to be finished, thoughts arriving quicker than they can be sorted. The second sense is much more recent and extends the same picture — an unexpected volume of material that has to get out through one opening, urgently — usually after a heavy night.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Tirer le portrait — To take someone's photograph.
- S'en moquer comme de l'an quarante — To not care in the slightest.
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
- Avoir d'autres chats à fouetter — To have more important things to do.
- Avoir le cul entre deux chaises — To be indecisive, caught between two options.
- Les carottes sont cuites — It's too late, nothing can be done.
More French idioms
- Manger sur le pouce — To eat in a hurry, standing up.
- Cucul la praline — Twee; soppy; embarrassingly naive.
- Pour des prunes — For nothing; in vain.
- Ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard — It's nothing special or impressive.
- C'est comme pisser dans un violon — A completely pointless effort.
- Avoir le cafard — To feel depressed or down.
From our tongue twisters
- 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'.
- Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès. — An 's' / 'si' minefield.
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