Monter sur ses grands chevaux
Meaning: To take offense and react with indignant superiority.
Language: French
Literally: To get up on one's tall horses
Category: Animals
Origin: The grands chevaux were the destriers, the tall warhorses a knight mounted only for battle rather than for travel. Climbing onto one signaled that the rider had decided to treat the matter as a fight.
More idioms — Animals
- Un cheval de Troie — A gift or arrangement that conceals a hostile purpose.
- C'est le chien de Jean de Nivelle — Said of someone who makes himself scarce precisely when he is called.
- Les chiens ne font pas des chats — Children inevitably resemble their parents.
- Les chiens aboient et la caravane passe — Criticism from bystanders does not stop those who are getting on with it.
- Ne pas attacher son chien avec des saucisses — To be extremely tight-fisted.
- Un temps de chien — Filthy, miserable weather.
More French idioms
- Mettre les bouchées doubles — To work twice as hard in order to catch up.
- 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.
- Clouer le bec à quelqu'un — To silence someone completely, usually with an unanswerable reply.
From our compliments & insults
- Avoir un poil dans la main — To be incurably lazy.
- Tête de linotte — A scatterbrain who can't hold a thought.
- Courir sur le haricot — To get badly on someone's nerves.
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