Faire ses ablutions
Meaning: To wash oneself; to do one's daily toilet.
Language: French
Literally: To perform one's ablutions
Category: Daily Life
Origin: From Latin ablutio, from abluere, 'to wash'. Ritual washing appears across religions — obligatory before Muslim prayer, and performed by Catholic priests before communion. The Latin Mass gave French lavabo, from the psalm 'Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas' recited during the hand-washing, a word that came to name first the washstand and then the basin itself.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Bouché à l'émeri — Dense, obtuse, narrow-minded; incapable of understanding.
- Griller un feu — To drive through a traffic light that is red.
- Éclairer la lanterne de quelqu'un — To supply the missing detail that lets someone finally understand.
- Outre mesure — Excessively, unreasonably, to an unwarranted degree.
- Une nuit blanche — A sleepless night.
- Une parole d'évangile — An incontestable truth.
More French idioms
- Être comme l'âne de Buridan — To be so paralyzed between two equally attractive options that you choose neither.
- Rire comme une baleine — To laugh uproariously, with your mouth wide open.
- Un vent à décorner les bœufs — A ferociously strong wind.
- La bave du crapaud n'atteint pas la blanche colombe — Insults from a contemptible source cannot touch the person they target.
- Savoir où le bât blesse — To know exactly where the real difficulty or sore point lies.
- Faire un bœuf — To improvise music together; to hold a jam session.
From our tongue twisters
- Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès. — An 's' / 'si' minefield.
- Dans ta tente ta tante t'attend. — A gentle 'ta / ten / tan / t'' warm-up that sounds faster than it reads.
- Seize chaises sèches sur seize arches sèches. — A relentless collision of 'sei', 'sèch', and 's' — the tongue can't find traction.
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