Être gonflé
Meaning: To be recklessly bold — or, said with irritation, to have a great deal of nerve.
Language: French
Literally: To be inflated / not to be short of air
Example: “Il arrive deux heures en retard et demande pourquoi on a commencé sans lui ? Il est gonflé !” — He shows up two hours late and asks why we started without him? He's got a nerve!
English equivalent: To have a nerve
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Gonfler appears in the 16th century meaning to distend by filling with air, as one filled and dried animal bladders. By the 17th the past participle had gone figurative for anything filled to excess — avoir le cœur gonflé de chagrin (to have a heart swollen with grief), être gonflé d'audace (swollen with daring). Only in the mid-19th does gonflé alone come to mean brave, by ellipsis from gonflé de courage, and another fifty years pass before it means full of nerve, around the time gonflé à bloc (inflated to the maximum) arrives with the image of a tire pumped hard. Ne pas manquer d'air is the joke that follows: not short of air is exactly what a thing inflated to bloc is not. The second sense is the first one seen from outside — daring that is misjudged or misplaced stops looking admirable and starts looking like cheek.
Equivalents in other languages
- Spanish: Tener más cara que espalda — literally: To have more face than back
- Spanish: por la cara — literally: for the face
- English: have a nerve
More idioms — Daily Life
- Tirer au flanc — To dodge work; to shirk.
- Habiller quelqu'un pour l'hiver — To run someone down, usually behind their back.
- Mettre le holà — To put a stop to something.
- Rire jaune — To force a laugh; to laugh while plainly not amused.
- Ça en jette ! — To look genuinely impressive.
- Con comme la lune — Exceptionally stupid.
More French idioms
- Pas folle, la guêpe ! — Said of someone shrewd enough not to be taken in.
- En rester comme deux ronds de flan — To be utterly dumbfounded.
- Taper sur le système — To get on someone's nerves.
- Ça me fait une belle jambe — That is no use to me whatsoever.
- Y a pas de lézard ! — No problem; it's all fine.
- Faire un malheur — To cause a scene with serious consequences — or, oppositely, to be a runaway success.
From our untranslatable words
- L'esprit de l'escalier — Thinking of the perfect comeback only after the moment has passed — on your way down the…
- Terroir — The unique character that a place — its soil, climate and tradition — gives to a wine or…
- Râler — To complain and grumble with a certain national flair — a beloved French pastime.