Passer à tabac

Literally: To be put through the tobacco

Example: “Selon la plainte, le suspect a été passé à tabac au commissariat.” — According to the complaint, the suspect was beaten to a pulp at the police station.

English equivalent: To beat someone to a pulp

Origin: Set it beside passer à la moulinette or passer au fil de l'épée and the grammar is obvious enough — passer à means to be subjected to the action of something. What is less obvious is why anyone would be subjected to the action of tobacco, and the answer is that nobody ever was. The root is tabb-, carrying the idea of striking, present in the dialects of Provence and Occitania from the 13th century and in verbs such as tabuster, to beat, by the 15th. It produced a slang tabas, and later tabasser, which was promptly swallowed by the identical-sounding tabac, so that by the very start of the 19th century tabac could mean a hail of blows. The expression is from the last quarter of that century. A tidier story, probably false, credits Vidocq — the convict who became head of the Paris police — with rewarding officers who got confessions out of suspects quickly with a packet of tobacco.