Manger de la vache enragée

Literally: To eat rabid cow

Example: “À ses débuts à Paris, le jeune acteur a mangé de la vache enragée.” — In his early days in Paris, the young actor fell on hard times.

English equivalent: To fall on hard times

Origin: It dates to the 17th century, originally as manger la vache enragée, and its logic is grim and straightforward: people poor enough have never been in a position to be fussy, and ate animals that had been kept off the market as diseased or unfit. The phrase seems to have formed from the collision of mener une vie enragée, the frantic existence of someone scrambling to stay alive, with manger de la vache malade. Because the origin has been forgotten and the words seem to speak for themselves, a lot of people now take it to mean being furious or wound up — as though eating an animal maddened by rabies passed the symptoms along with the meat. It does not. The misery is economic, not dietary.