FrenchPasser un savon
Meaning: To scold or rebuke someone harshly.
Literally: To pass a soap
Example: “Mon chef m'a passé un savon parce que j'avais oublié la réunion.” — My boss chewed me out because I'd forgotten the meeting.
English equivalent: To read someone the riot act
Equivalents in other languages
English: To read the riot act
Icelandic: Að taka einhvern á beinið Literally: To take someone onto the bone
German: jemanden zur Schnecke machen Literally: To make someone into a snail
Origin: Savon (soap) for a scolding comes from the washhouse, where laundry was soaped and then beaten hard with a wooden paddle (battoir) to drive the dirt out. Expressio connects it to the older laver la tête à quelqu'un (to wash someone's head), which, it says, meant giving someone a beating in the 17th century and then a dressing-down. By the 1780s faire un savon à quelqu'un was common enough for the grammarian Féraud to condemn it as a barbarism, and the Académie française listed donner un savon as popular French in 1835. Passer un savon is the form most heard today.
More French idioms
- Ne pas fermer l’œil de la nuit To be unable to sleep; to stay awake all night.
- Réduire la voilure To cut back on spending, resources, or ambitions.
- Se mettre la rate au court-bouillon To worry pointlessly and obsessively over something.
- Prendre à la gorge To seize someone or something forcefully; to make breathing or speech difficult; to trigg…
- Regarder la pointe de ses souliers To lower one's eyes in embarrassment or shame.
- Faire florès To achieve success and build a reputation.
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- Espèce de patate You dim bulb — a potato being the very picture of inert, unthinking stodginess.
- Quel râleur / quelle râleuse You never stop moaning — everything is a complaint, nothing is ever good enough.
- Peau de vache A mean, difficult, and unpleasant person — tough and unyielding like tanned hide.
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