Honi soit qui mal y pense
Meaning: Let anyone who reads something improper into this be the one disgraced.
Language: French
Literally: Shamed be he who thinks evil of it
Category: Daily Life
Origin: The motto of the Order of the Garter, founded around 1348, said to date from Edward III retrieving a lady's fallen garter and rebuking the sniggering court. The single n in honi is Old French and is corrected wrongly all the time.
More idioms — Daily Life
- À huis clos — In closed session, with the public excluded.
- Mettre à l'index — To blacklist something or exclude it from acceptable use.
- Un violon d'Ingres — A serious passion pursued outside one's actual profession.
- Un coup de Jarnac — An unexpected decisive stroke, delivered within the rules but not quite sportingly.
- Jeux de mains, jeux de vilains — Horseplay ends badly.
- On ne peut être juge et partie — Nobody may rule on a matter in which they have an interest.
More French idioms
- Un jugement de Salomon — A ruling of great wisdom that exposes the truth by testing it.
- C'est kif-kif — It makes no difference at all.
- Une fine lame — A highly skilled practitioner.
- Sur l'air des lampions — Chanted rhythmically on three insistent notes, as a crowd does.
- Perdre son latin — To be completely baffled by something.
- Se reposer sur ses lauriers — To coast on past achievements instead of continuing to work.
From our untranslatable words
- Épanouissement — The full flourishing of a person — blooming into your most complete, radiant self. More t…
- Ressourcement — The act of returning to one's roots or origins to find renewal — going back to a place, t…
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
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