Le torchon brûle
Meaning: There is open discord — most often between a couple.
Language: French
Literally: The dishcloth is burning
Category: Daily Life
Origin: The modern picture is a domestic scene, a tea towel catching fire on the stove and a row starting immediately, which is a fine image and is not where the phrase comes from. It dates to the end of the 18th century, and in it torchon is not a kitchen cloth. The word's earliest sense, in the 12th century, was a blow — a hit — which puts the fight in the phrase from the start; a coup de torchon is still a brawl and a torchée is still a thrashing. The Académie's 1798 dictionary takes a different line, glossing torchon here as torche, a burning brand, so that the discord is literally alight. Claude Duneton proposes both at once, as a double pun: torcher in the sense of trading blows, plus the brûler children use in hide-and-seek, where you are told tu brûles as you get close to the hidden thing. On that reading, the dishcloth is burning means the blows are getting very near. Perfectly clear.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Fort comme un Turc — Extremely strong and robust.
- Avoir une veine de cocu — To be outrageously, undeservedly lucky.
- Prendre une veste — To suffer a defeat, especially at the polls.
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
- Avoir d'autres chats à fouetter — To have more important things to do.
- Avoir le cul entre deux chaises — To be indecisive, caught between two options.
More French idioms
- Y a pas à tortiller du cul — Enough hesitating — a decision has to be made. Also: this is simply undeniable.
- Ne pas valoir tripette — To be worthless; to be of no interest whatsoever.
- Ne pas avoir les yeux en face des trous — To be unable to see what is right in front of you — usually because you are barely awake.
- Manger de la vache enragée — To live in real poverty; to go through a long stretch of hardship.
- Parler français comme une vache espagnole — To speak French appallingly badly.
- Une peau de vache — A vicious, pitiless person — a hard case, especially one with authority over you.
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