Crever la dalle

Literally: To burst the gullet

Example: “On n'a rien mangé depuis ce matin, je crève la dalle.” — We haven't eaten since this morning; I could eat a horse.

English equivalent: I could eat a horse

Origin: The dalle here is not the paving slab the word means today — that sense arrives only in the 16th century. Earlier it was a channel or gutter, borrowed from Old Norman daela, and 15th-century slang took it from there for the gullet, the pipe that food and drink go down. The same image gives se rincer la dalle (to rinse one's gullet, meaning to have a drink) and avoir la dalle en pente (to have a sloping gullet, said of someone who drinks steadily). Crever la dalle blends crever de faim (to be dying of hunger) with that pipe; the milder avoir la dalle is recorded from about 1960, in Auguste Le Breton.