Crever la dalle
Meaning: To be extremely hungry.
Language: French
Literally: To burst the gullet
Category: Food & Drink
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.
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- Raconter des salades — To tell lies or tall tales.
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More French idioms
- En deux coups de cuillère à pot — In no time at all, and with no apparent difficulty.
- Avoir le feu au cul — To be in a tearing hurry; or, to be highly sexually eager.
- Prendre la poudre d'escampette — To clear off in a hurry.
- Que dalle — Nothing at all.
- 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.
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