Être dans ses petits souliers
Meaning: To be acutely ill at ease.
Language: French
Literally: To be in one's little shoes
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Shoes a size too small make every moment uncomfortable and every movement awkward, which is exactly the social state described. It is embarrassment rather than fear.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Mordre la poussière — To be defeated; to fall.
- Avoir plus d'un tour dans son sac — To have resources in reserve.
- Vider son sac — To say everything one has been holding back.
- À tue-tête — At the top of one's voice.
- Dire ses quatre vérités à quelqu'un — To tell someone exactly what is wrong with them.
- Avoir la main verte — To have a gift for growing plants.
More French idioms
- De la poudre de perlimpinpin — A worthless remedy sold with great confidence.
- Un lit de Procuste — A standard imposed regardless of what it does to the thing being measured.
- Le rocher de Sisyphe — A labor that must be repeated forever and never completes.
- Le supplice de Tantale — Having what one wants permanently in sight and permanently out of reach.
- Une solution de continuité — A break or gap — not, despite appearances, a solution to anything.
- Demain, on rase gratis — A promise perpetually postponed.
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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