Être au taquet
Meaning: To be flat out, giving everything — or to have hit a limit that will not move.
Language: French
Literally: To be at the cleat
Category: Daily Life
Origin: A taquet is whatever stops a thing from going further. The word has meant a block of wood wedged against a door since the 15th century, a shim under a wobbling cabinet since the 19th, a cleat holding a rope or a sail at a fixed tension since the 17th, and the metal stop that halted a typewriter carriage at the end of its travel. Every one of them exists to say no further. So the kid doing 55 through town on a bored-out 49cc moped has the throttle au taquet, screwed hard against its stop, and the colleague who cannot take on one more thing is au taquet in exactly the same way. Climbers use it for the moment before the fall, on a route above your grade or past the end of your strength — still a limit, only now on the wrong side of it. The two senses are one idea seen from either end: pressed to the maximum, and unable to exceed it.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Le téléphone arabe — Word of mouth — news traveling by rumor, fast and increasingly wrong.
- Le torchon brûle — There is open discord — most often between a couple.
- Fort comme un Turc — Extremely strong and robust.
- Avoir une veine de cocu — To be outrageously, undeservedly lucky.
- Prendre une veste — To suffer a defeat, especially at the polls.
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
More French idioms
- À tire-larigot — In enormous quantities; to excess.
- Y a pas à tortiller du cul — Enough hesitating — a decision has to be made. Also: this is simply undeniable.
- Ne pas valoir tripette — To be worthless; to be of no interest whatsoever.
- Ne pas avoir les yeux en face des trous — To be unable to see what is right in front of you — usually because you are barely awake.
- Manger de la vache enragée — To live in real poverty; to go through a long stretch of hardship.
- Parler français comme une vache espagnole — To speak French appallingly badly.
From our tongue twisters
- Didon dîna, dit-on, du dos d'un dodu dindon dont le dodu dos dodine. — A 'd' / 'din' / 'dod' avalanche that seems designed to jam the tongue in third gear.
- Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien. — The classic French 'ch' / 's' tangler.
- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? — A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.
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