La mouche du coche
Meaning: Someone who bustles importantly while contributing nothing.
Language: French
Literally: The coach fly
Category: Animals
Origin: From La Fontaine's fable, in which a fly buzzes around a struggling coach, stings the horses, and claims the credit when the vehicle reaches the top of the hill. The fable is explicit that the horses did the work.
More idioms — Animals
- On n'attrape pas les mouches avec du vinaigre — Gentleness achieves what harshness cannot.
- Prendre la mouche — To take sudden and disproportionate offense.
- Ours mal léché — A boorish, ill-mannered person.
- Un oiseau rare — An exceptional find; someone with an unlikely combination of qualities.
- Les moutons de Panurge — People who follow the crowd without thinking.
- Charger la mule — To pile on far too much; to overcharge someone.
More French idioms
- Ne pas valoir un pet de lapin — To be entirely worthless.
- Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop — You cannot permanently suppress your real character.
- C'est la mer à boire — It is an impossible or endless task — most often used in the negative.
- Faire son miel de quelque chose — To turn something to one's own advantage.
- La substantifique moelle — The essential substance of something, reached only by real effort.
- On ne fait pas d'omelette sans casser des œufs — Worthwhile results require some damage along the way.
From our proverbs
- Critics are like brushers of other men's clothes. — Critics remove surface blemishes from others' work while remaining invisible to their own…
- A crooked tree will have a crooked shadow. — Flawed character inevitably produces flawed outcomes, just as a tree's deformity cannot c…
- Crosses are ladders for getting to heaven. — Suffering and hardship, like rungs on a ladder, provide the necessary steps toward spirit…
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