Englishcome out smelling like a rose
Meaning: To avoid blame that one deserves; to seem innocent.
Example: “The scandal ruined his colleagues, but he somehow came out smelling like a rose.”
Equivalents in other languages
French: Tirer son épingle du jeu Literally: To pull your pin out of the game
Origin: American, from the early 1900s, and the full, blunter original makes the image far more vivid than the shortened modern version: to fall into filth and still come out smelling like roses, unmarked by any of it. Roses have long stood for purity, freshness, and pleasant fragrance, so surviving a genuinely bad or compromising situation with your reputation completely intact is described as smelling like the one thing least associated with the mess you were just in — an outcome good enough to seem almost implausible.
More English idioms
- cut someone to the quick To hurt or wound someone deeply.
- damn someone with faint praise To criticize in such a way that one appears to be praising when in fact one is condemning…
- dawn on someone To realize something that was perhaps already apparent to others.
- someone's days are numbered There is only a short time before something ends.
- dead to the world Fast asleep.
- deal someone in To include someone in something, especially a card game.
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