Être gonflé / Ne pas manquer d'air
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
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.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Tirer au flanc / Tirer au cul — To dodge work; to shirk.
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
- Avoir d'autres chats à fouetter — To have more important things to do.
- Avoir le cul entre deux chaises — To be indecisive, caught between two options.
- Les carottes sont cuites — It's too late, nothing can be done.
- Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof — I don't understand anything at all.
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.
- Ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard — It's nothing special or impressive.
- C'est comme pisser dans un violon — A completely pointless effort.
- Avoir le cafard — To feel depressed or down.
- Poser un lapin — To stand someone up on a date.
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…
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- Râler — To complain and grumble with a certain national flair — a beloved French pastime.
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