IdiomDaily Life
French
FrenchFaire la grasse matinée
Meaning: To sleep in and have a lazy lie-in.
Literally: To do the fat morning
Example: “Le dimanche, j'adore faire la grasse matinée.” — On Sundays, I love sleeping in.
Origin: Gras (fat) here means rich and abundant, and a grasse matinée is a morning made long and comfortable by staying in bed. The phrase is old: Jean Nicot's dictionary of 1606 already has dormir la grasse matinée, and the poet Mathurin Régnier, in his Satires of the early 1600s, praised the beauty of lying in bed la grasse matinée. Faire has since replaced dormir as the usual verb.
More French idioms
- Avoir le bras long To have influence and useful connections.
- Découvrir le pot aux roses To uncover a hidden secret.
- Être dans de beaux draps To be in a real mess.
- Se faire rouler dans la farine To be conned or deceived.
- Tirer le diable par la queue To struggle to make ends meet.
- Passer du coq à l'âne To switch topics abruptly and illogically.
Explore another collection: False Friends
Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
Keep exploring