Cucul la praline

Literally: Silly-bum the praline

Example: “Ce téléfilm de Noël est vraiment cucul la praline.” — That Christmas TV movie is all hearts and flowers.

English equivalent: Hearts and flowers

Origin: Cucul is a childish reduplication of cul, and why that came to mean silly rather than anything else is not known. Nor is it known why a feminine noun was hooked on the end to intensify it — the same construction gives cucul la fraise and cucul la rainette. The expression is from the first half of the 20th century, and Colette was using the bare cucu in 1933. The praline itself is named for the Maréchal de Plessis-Praslin, whose cook invented the sugared almond in the 17th century; the word means something different to everyone, being a sugared almond in France, a filled chocolate in Belgium, and a bullet to a criminal. One published account routes it through the Seychelles, where the island of Praslin grows a very suggestively shaped coconut known as the coco-fesses — fesses plus Praslin plus the confection giving cucul la praline, with the nut's ridiculous shape supplying the sense. For the record, a cuculle is less ridiculous than a cucul: it is a monk's hood.