Faire le mariole

Literally: To play the mariole

Example: “Arrête de faire le mariole sur ton vélo, tu vas tomber.” — Stop being a smart aleck on your bike; you're going to fall.

English equivalent: A smart aleck

Origin: Mariole turns up in France in the 16th century, first as mariol, and its parentage is unsettled between two accounts. One takes it from Italian marivolo or mariolo, a swindler literally and a crafty type figuratively — and swindler is the sense it first carries in French. The other, in the Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, derives it from a 13th-century mariole, a small image of the Virgin Mary, applied to someone who feigns devotion. Both roads lead back to Marie, which may be the point: marionnette comes from Marion, itself from Marie, and puppets behave with exactly the excess that gets them noticed. The swindler sense is 16th century; the boastful one only 19th. The story crediting a Napoleonic guardsman named Gay Mariole does not survive the dates — the modern sense is attested in 1726.