C'est de l'hébreu
Meaning: It is completely incomprehensible.
Language: French
Literally: It's Hebrew
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Each language picks a script its speakers cannot read: French takes Hebrew, English takes Greek, Greek takes Chinese. French also offers du chinois and, older, de l'iroquois.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Vieux comme Hérode — Extremely ancient.
- Un combat homérique — A struggle of epic scale and duration.
- Un homme averti en vaut deux — Advance warning doubles a person's effectiveness.
- Honi soit qui mal y pense — Let anyone who reads something improper into this be the one disgraced.
- À huis clos — In closed session, with the public excluded.
- Mettre à l'index — To blacklist something or exclude it from acceptable use.
More French idioms
- Un violon d'Ingres — A serious passion pursued outside one's actual profession.
- Un coup de Jarnac — An unexpected decisive stroke, delivered within the rules but not quite sportingly.
- Jeux de mains, jeux de vilains — Horseplay ends badly.
- On ne peut être juge et partie — Nobody may rule on a matter in which they have an interest.
- Un jugement de Salomon — A ruling of great wisdom that exposes the truth by testing it.
- C'est kif-kif — It makes no difference at all.
From our tongue twisters
- Dans ta tente ta tante t'attend. — A gentle 'ta / ten / tan / t'' warm-up that sounds faster than it reads.
- Seize chaises sèches sur seize arches sèches. — A relentless collision of 'sei', 'sèch', and 's' — the tongue can't find traction.
- Un beau ver vert dans un verre vert verra un ver vert. — Ver (worm), vert (green), and verre (glass) are near-homophones — distinguishing them at…
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