IdiomBody & Senses
French
FrenchLa langue de bois
Meaning: Rigid, evasive doublespeak — language cut off from reality that carries a deliberately rigged message.
Literally: The wooden tongue
Example: “Interrogé sur les licenciements, le porte-parole s'est réfugié dans la langue de bois.” — Asked about the layoffs, the spokesman hid behind empty official jargon.
Origin: Recorded in France only from the 1970s, borrowed from Russian: before the revolution langue de chêne, 'oak tongue', mocked the stifling style of tsarist bureaucracy, and the Bolshevik era did nothing to loosen it. Cattle also contract a fungal infection that stiffens the tongue, known by the same name.
More French idioms
- Sentir le fagot To reek of heresy; more broadly, to arouse suspicion or invite condemnation.
- Faire ses ablutions To wash oneself; to do one's daily toilet.
- 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.
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Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
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