Ne pas avoir les yeux en face des trous
Meaning: To be unable to see what is right in front of you — usually because you are barely awake.
Language: French
Literally: Not to have one's eyes lined up with the holes
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: The morning after a bad night, or a good one, the eyes are open and demonstrably not working: you walk into the dog, you catch the door with your shoulder, you pour the coffee alongside the cup. From the 17th century French said such a person a les yeux de travers, had their eyes on crooked. This phrase, attested in 1925, takes the same joke further and proposes that the eyes are not sitting properly in their sockets at all — not lined up with the holes provided. Gaston Esnault argued the holes are the eyeholes of a mask being worn, which would also impair the view but adds nothing to an image that already explains itself, and no other source backs him. The second sense follows from the first: anyone who fails to notice a thing in plain sight gets the same diagnosis, whatever time of day it is.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Tomber dans les pommes — Suddenly losing consciousness — possibly derived from the older expression 'être dans les…
- Avoir la moutarde qui monte au nez — To be getting angry.
- Couper les cheveux en quatre — To over-analyze or split hairs.
- Se regarder le nombril — To be self-centered or narcissistic.
- Tomaten auf den Augen haben — To be oblivious to what's right in front of you.
- Die Daumen drücken — To wish someone good luck (like crossing fingers).
More French idioms
- Fort comme un Turc — Extremely strong and robust.
- Manger de la vache enragée — To live in real poverty; to go through a long stretch of hardship.
- Parler français comme une vache espagnole — To speak French appallingly badly.
- Une peau de vache — A vicious, pitiless person — a hard case, especially one with authority over you.
- La vache ! — An exclamation — either at someone's rottenness, or, just as often, at something impressi…
- Avoir une veine de cocu — To be outrageously, undeservedly lucky.
From our proverbs
- Better be idle than ill employed. — Doing nothing wisely surpasses doing something harmful or wasteful to yourself and others.
- Idleness is the key of beggary. — Lack of effort and activity inevitably leads to poverty and dependence on others' charity.
- Idleness is the root of all evil. — Lack of productive activity breeds vice, as unoccupied minds and hands naturally drift to…
Loading the full interactive collection…