Être dans la mouise / Être dans la panade / Être dans la purée
Meaning: To be broke and in real trouble.
Language: French
Literally: To be in the gruel
Category: Food & Drink
Origin: Mouise has meant destitution since the 1890s. It comes from the dialects of eastern France, where a mouesse or mousse was a coarse jam or a gruel, the word going back to German Mus, mush. Before it meant misery it meant bad soup, and after that colic. Panade and purée traveled the same road: both named a thick gruel — the Provençal panade was a soup built on bread — and both ended in poverty. Two things drove the shift. Thin soups and gruels were what you ate on hard days, so by metonymy they came to name the hardship itself; and their consistency was uncomfortably near the other thing mouise had passed through, which is the same image standing behind être dans la merde.
More idioms — Food & Drink
- Tomber dans les pommes — Suddenly losing consciousness — possibly derived from the older expression 'être dans les…
- Avoir la moutarde qui monte au nez — To be getting angry.
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
- Raconter des salades — To tell lies or tall tales.
- En faire tout un fromage — To make a big deal out of nothing.
- Mettre son grain de sel — To give an unsolicited opinion.
More French idioms
- Faire le mariole — To show off; to play the smart aleck.
- Fumer la moquette — To be talking obvious nonsense; to be off one's head.
- Laisser pisser le mérinos — To let things take their course; to wait it out.
- Rouler des mécaniques — To swagger; to throw one's weight around.
- Sauver les meubles — To salvage what matters from a disaster.
- Se casser la margoulette — To come a cropper; to take a bad fall.
From our false friends
- Déception — Actually means 'disappointment'. For deception (a trick), say tromperie.
- Monnaie — Actually means 'change' or 'coins'. Money in general is l'argent.
- Sensible — Actually means 'sensitive'. For sensible/level-headed, say raisonnable.
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