FrenchPasser du coq à l'âne
Meaning: To switch topics abruptly and illogically.
Literally: To jump from the rooster to the donkey
Example: “Avec lui, impossible de suivre : il passe du coq à l'âne sans arrêt.” — With him, it's impossible to keep up: he keeps jumping from one topic to another.
Origin: The phrase goes back to the 14th century: Jean Le Fèvre de Ressons wrote saillir du coq en l'asne, to leap from the rooster to the donkey, in 1376. A rooster and a donkey have nothing to do with each other, so jumping from one to the other is changing the subject with no link at all. One suggestion is that asne stood for Latin anas, a duck, which would make the pair two birds, but this is not confirmed. In the 1530s Clément Marot gave the name coq-à-l'âne to his rambling satirical verse letters.
More French idioms
- Avoir le melon To be bigheaded and conceited.
- Mettre la charrue avant les bœufs To do things in the wrong order.
- Avoir le cœur sur la main To be very generous and giving.
- Tirer son épingle du jeu To extract yourself cleverly from a tricky situation.
- Être soupe au lait To be quick-tempered and flare up easily.
- Ne pas être sorti de l'auberge To be far from done with one's troubles.
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