Montrer patte blanche
Meaning: To produce the credentials needed to be let in somewhere.
Language: French
Literally: To show a white paw
Category: Animals
Origin: Popularized by La Fontaine's fable 'Le Loup, la Chèvre et le Chevreau', in which the kid, left home alone, demands the caller show a white paw like his mother's — the wolf's dark paw gives him away. Often credited to the Brothers Grimm's 'The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids', but they wrote roughly a century and a half after La Fontaine.
More idioms — Animals
- Être comme l'âne de Buridan — To be so paralyzed between two equally attractive options that you choose neither.
- Rire comme une baleine — To laugh uproariously, with your mouth wide open.
- Un vent à décorner les bœufs — A ferociously strong wind.
- La bave du crapaud n'atteint pas la blanche colombe — Insults from a contemptible source cannot touch the person they target.
- Savoir où le bât blesse — To know exactly where the real difficulty or sore point lies.
- Faire un bœuf — To improvise music together; to hold a jam session.
More French idioms
- Tenir la dragée haute à quelqu'un — To keep someone waiting before granting what they ask, so they feel the power you hold ov…
- Sucrer les fraises — To have trembling hands; by extension, to be doddering.
- Les Anglais ont débarqué — To have one's period.
- S'envoyer en l'air — To have sex.
- Sacrifier à Vénus — To have sex.
- La langue de bois — Rigid, evasive doublespeak — language cut off from reality that carries a deliberately ri…
From our compliments & insults
- C'est une vraie chèvre — They're hopelessly stubborn and infuriating — a goat that refuses to be moved.
- Casse-pieds — A massive bore or pain in the neck — someone who wears you down with their irritating way…
- Espèce de patate — You dim bulb — a potato being the very picture of inert, unthinking stodginess.
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