Par le petit bout de la lorgnette
Meaning: From a needlessly narrow point of view.
Language: French
Literally: Through the small end of the opera glass
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Looking through opera glasses the wrong way makes everything distant and tiny. The phrase accuses someone of shrinking a subject rather than merely missing part of it.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Être une lumière — To be highly intelligent — used almost exclusively in the negative.
- Une lune de miel — The first happy period of a marriage, or of any new arrangement.
- Bien luné — In a good mood — and mal luné, in a bad one.
- Depuis belle lurette — For ages; for a very long time.
- Depuis des lustres — For a very long time.
- Pleurer comme une Madeleine — To cry copiously and without restraint.
More French idioms
- Une madeleine de Proust — A small sensory trigger that unlocks a flood of memory.
- Avoir maille à partir avec quelqu'un — To have a quarrel or a bone to pick with someone.
- Faire main basse sur quelque chose — To seize something wholesale.
- S'en laver les mains — To disclaim all responsibility for an outcome.
- Tout le saint-frusquin — The whole lot; everything one owns.
- Des yeux de merlan frit — A soppy, languishing look.
From our proverbs
- Courtesy on one side never lasts long. — Politeness requires mutual effort; when only one person maintains kindness, the relations…
- Men dream in courtship but in wedlock wake. — Romantic idealization fades when fantasy must survive the daily realities of married life.
- Call me cousin; but cozen me not. — Familiarity and kinship don't justify deception; treat relatives honestly despite closene…
Loading the full interactive collection…