L'avoir dans l'os
Meaning: To come off badly; to be had.
Language: French
Literally: To have it in the bone
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Os has carried several regional and slang senses — mouth in the Occitan south, nose, and the male member — but the one at work here is another. Failure and disappointment usually arrive by way of somebody else who has deceived you, and French reaches by habit for sodomy as its metaphor of being got the better of. The os is standing for the innermost part of a man, perhaps because the orifice sits so close to the sacrum and the coccyx, both familiar bones, or simply because a bone cut through is a ring. Gaston Esnault has the word in this sense from the end of the 19th century, but the expression itself only from the middle of the 20th.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Coûter la peau des fesses / Coûter les yeux de la tête — To cost an absolute fortune.
- Rouler un patin / Rouler une galoche — To kiss deeply, with tongue.
- Tomber dans les pommes — Suddenly losing consciousness — possibly derived from the older expression 'être dans les…
- Avoir la moutarde qui monte au nez — To be getting angry.
- Couper les cheveux en quatre — To over-analyze or split hairs.
- Se regarder le nombril — To be self-centered or narcissistic.
More French idioms
- Être à l'ouest — To be out of it; not with it at all.
- Avoir des oursins dans la poche / Avoir des oursins dans le porte-monnaie — To be tight-fisted.
- Sur la paille — Reduced to real poverty.
- Avoir un nom à coucher dehors — To have a name nobody can pronounce or remember.
- Être dans les petits papiers de quelqu'un — To be in someone's good books; to enjoy their favor.
- Faire un pataquès — To make a clumsy verbal slip, or a blunder generally; also, to make an enormous fuss over…
From our tongue twisters
- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? — A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.
- 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.
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