Couper le sifflet à quelqu'un
Meaning: To silence someone abruptly, usually with an unanswerable point.
Language: French
Literally: To cut someone's whistle
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Sifflet is slang for the windpipe, so the literal sense is cutting a throat. The figurative use is entirely conversational, which makes the violence of the image the joke.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Être dans ses petits souliers — To be acutely ill at ease.
- Mordre la poussière — To be defeated; to fall.
- Avoir plus d'un tour dans son sac — To have resources in reserve.
- Vider son sac — To say everything one has been holding back.
- À tue-tête — At the top of one's voice.
- Dire ses quatre vérités à quelqu'un — To tell someone exactly what is wrong with them.
More French idioms
- De la poudre de perlimpinpin — A worthless remedy sold with great confidence.
- Un lit de Procuste — A standard imposed regardless of what it does to the thing being measured.
- Le rocher de Sisyphe — A labor that must be repeated forever and never completes.
- Le supplice de Tantale — Having what one wants permanently in sight and permanently out of reach.
- Une solution de continuité — A break or gap — not, despite appearances, a solution to anything.
- Demain, on rase gratis — A promise perpetually postponed.
From our false friends
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- Assister — Actually means 'to attend' an event. J'assiste à la réunion = I attend the meeting. For a…
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