Met de deur in huis vallen

Literally: To fall with the door into the house

Example: “Om met de deur in huis te vallen: we gaan verhuizen naar Canada.” — To cut to the chase: we're moving to Canada.

English equivalent: To cut to the chase

Origin: No single origin is confirmed, and several competing theories circulate. One points to medieval theater, where stage sets often represented a house with a prominent door, with characters entering abruptly and without warning as a recognizable dramatic device. A second imagines mounted knights arriving somewhere so eagerly that they figuratively barreled straight through the gate or door, horse and all, with no pause for a polite announcement. A third reaches for farmers rushing a freshly gathered harvest indoors as quickly as possible, all but crashing through the barn door in their hurry to get everything under cover. A fourth, and most frequently cited, explanation points to medieval house design generally: without any entryway, hall, or vestibule to soften the transition, opening the front door meant stepping directly into the main living space, with no polite pause between outside and in — an architectural bluntness that gave a very literal shape to the same abruptness the idiom now describes in conversation. Dutch language historians place the figurative idiom itself in the 1700s or 1800s, without settling conclusively on which literal image, if any, came first.