Mettre les bouchées doubles
Meaning: To work twice as hard in order to catch up.
Language: French
Literally: To take double mouthfuls
Category: Food & Drink
Origin: The image is of eating at twice the normal rate to finish a meal in half the time. It is about compressing a fixed amount of work into less time, not about doing more of it.
More idioms — Food & Drink
- La dive bouteille — Wine, treated with mock reverence.
- Boire le calice jusqu'à la lie — To endure an ordeal all the way to its most humiliating end.
- La cerise sur le gâteau — A final touch that completes something already good — often said sarcastically of a last…
- Ni chair ni poisson — Neither one thing nor the other; impossible to classify.
- Un cordon-bleu — An outstanding cook.
- Il y a loin de la coupe aux lèvres — Much can still go wrong between intention and result.
More French idioms
- Clouer le bec à quelqu'un — To silence someone completely, usually with an unanswerable reply.
- Se crêper le chignon — To have a furious quarrel — said of women.
- Avoir les yeux de Chimène pour quelqu'un — To be visibly smitten with someone or something.
- Se faire des cheveux blancs — To worry oneself sick.
- Haut les cœurs ! — Take courage; lift your spirits.
- Aux calendes grecques — Never — used of something postponed indefinitely.
From our untranslatable words
- Épanouissement — The full flourishing of a person — blooming into your most complete, radiant self. More t…
- Ressourcement — The act of returning to one's roots or origins to find renewal — going back to a place, t…
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
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