Les Anglais ont débarqué
Meaning: To have one's period.
Language: French
Literally: The English have landed
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Nothing to do with 1944. After Waterloo in 1815 the British occupied France until 1820, dressed in red uniforms. Parisian popular speech of the 1820s linked that tide of red-coated occupiers to menstrual blood, in pointed memory of the departing army.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- S'envoyer en l'air — To have sex.
- Sacrifier à Vénus — To have sex.
- La langue de bois — Rigid, evasive doublespeak — language cut off from reality that carries a deliberately ri…
- Ne pas être dans son assiette — To feel out of sorts, physically or mentally off-form.
- Se défendre bec et ongles — To fight back with everything you have.
- Connaître bibliquement — To have had sex with someone.
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.
From our tongue twisters
- Seize chaises sèches sur seize arches sèches. — A relentless collision of 'sei', 'sèch', and 's' — the tongue can't find traction.
- Un beau ver vert dans un verre vert verra un ver vert. — Ver (worm), vert (green), and verre (glass) are near-homophones — distinguishing them at…
- Didon dîna, dit-on, du dos d'un dodu dindon dont le dodu dos dodine. — A 'd' / 'din' / 'dod' avalanche that seems designed to jam the tongue in third gear.
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