fuir comme la peste
Meaning: To avoid something or someone as much as possible.
Language: French
Literally: to flee like the plague
Category: Nature
Origin: The plague was historically the most feared and universally avoided pestilence; the simile captures absolute avoidance.
More idioms — Nature
- tomber à l’eau — To be canceled or abandoned.
- battre les fourrés — To range far and wide in search of adventure or chance encounters.
- prendre le maquis — To go into hiding or join a resistance movement to escape authority or persecution.
- remuer ciel et terre — To exert all possible effort and use every available means to achieve a goal.
- de aquellos polvos, estos lodos — Consequences or problems arise later from careless or harmful actions taken earlier; misd…
- a contracorriente — To act or think in opposition to prevailing opinion, custom, or the natural course of eve…
More French idioms
- beurrer épais — To exaggerate or overdo something.
- mettre ses deux mains au feu — To stake one's reputation or safety by guaranteeing something is true.
- tendre les bras — To offer help and support to someone, or to welcome them warmly.
- retourner à la case départ — To find oneself back where one began, as if no progress had been made.
- sentir la naphtaline — To be old-fashioned or antiquated.
- passer maître — To become the foremost expert in something.
From our proverbs
- Many things grow in the garden that were never planted there. — Unexpected consequences and benefits arise from life's circumstances beyond our initial i…
- Gems must not be valued by what they are set in. — True worth lies beyond external packaging; judge people and things by inherent quality, n…
- Gentility without ability is worse than plain beggary. — Social pretense without competence breeds contempt; honest poverty deserves more respect…