Mettre le grappin sur quelque chose
Meaning: To get one's hooks into something and not let go.
Language: French
Literally: To put the grappling hook on something
Category: Daily Life
Origin: The grappin is the boarding hook thrown to bind an enemy ship alongside so its crew cannot disengage. The phrase keeps that quality of a hold that cannot be shaken off.
More idioms — Daily Life
- De gré ou de force — Willingly or unwillingly; one way or another.
- Le Grenelle de quelque chose — A large multi-party negotiation convened to settle a national issue.
- L'habit ne fait pas le moine — Appearances do not establish what someone is.
- C'est de l'hébreu — It is completely incomprehensible.
- Vieux comme Hérode — Extremely ancient.
- Un combat homérique — A struggle of epic scale and duration.
More French idioms
- Un homme averti en vaut deux — Advance warning doubles a person's effectiveness.
- Honi soit qui mal y pense — Let anyone who reads something improper into this be the one disgraced.
- À huis clos — In closed session, with the public excluded.
- Mettre à l'index — To blacklist something or exclude it from acceptable use.
- Un violon d'Ingres — A serious passion pursued outside one's actual profession.
- Un coup de Jarnac — An unexpected decisive stroke, delivered within the rules but not quite sportingly.
From our proverbs
- They complain wrongfully of the sea, who twice suffer shipwreck. — Repeated misfortune from the same cause reveals poor judgment rather than bad luck.
- Cold of complexion, good of condition. — Temperamental coldness in personality often accompanies moral virtue and sound character.
- Confession of a fault makes half amends for it. — Admitting wrongdoing demonstrates genuine remorse and restores trust faster than pretendi…
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