Dur à la détente
Meaning: Slow to understand — or, in the other sense, reluctant to part with money.
Language: French
Literally: Stiff on the trigger
Category: Daily Life
Origin: The détente is a firearm's trigger, and a stiff one is slow to release. Both modern senses follow from that reluctance to let go, though the financial one is now the more common.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Qui paye ses dettes s'enrichit — Settling what you owe leaves you better off than owing it.
- Faire son deuil de quelque chose — To accept that something is lost and give up on it.
- Jeter son dévolu sur quelque chose — To settle firmly on something one intends to have.
- À Dieu ne plaise — God forbid.
- Dieu reconnaîtra les siens — Act without discriminating and let a higher authority sort out the innocent.
- Mon petit doigt m'a dit — I know something you did not expect me to know.
More French idioms
- Dorer la pilule — To make an unpleasant fact easier to accept by dressing it up.
- Qui dort dîne — Sleep takes the place of a meal you cannot afford.
- Se la couler douce — To take life very easy indeed.
- Des mesures draconiennes — Punishingly severe rules.
- Péter une durite — To lose one's temper completely.
- À l'eau de rose — Insipidly sentimental, especially of fiction.
From our untranslatable words
- Épanouissement — The full flourishing of a person — blooming into your most complete, radiant self. More t…
- Ressourcement — The act of returning to one's roots or origins to find renewal — going back to a place, t…
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
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