Pédé comme un phoque

Literally: Queer as a seal

Example: “L'association a porté plainte après que le joueur a lancé « pédé comme un phoque » à un arbitre.” — The association filed a complaint after the player hurled a homophobic slur at a referee.

Origin: First the word: pédé is a clipping of pédéraste, from the Greek, and although it now means a gay man it once meant a man with an improper interest in children. Then the seal, which explains nothing at all — no observation supports the idea that seals behave homosexually — so what is left is a stack of guesses, none confirmed. The most repeated is nautical: a spoken deformation of foc, the jib, supposedly because that sail takes the wind from behind. Anyone who has sailed close-hauled can dispose of that, since the jib fills perfectly with the wind near the bow. A second nautical version has the jib set on the opposite side of the boat's axis from the mainsail, the mainsail standing for heterosexuality. A third is a chain of puns: the old slander about Greek morals gives pédé comme un Grec, Greeks suggest Genoese, and a large jib happens to be called a génois — so Grec to Génois to foc to phoque. A fourth hears pine and pède inside pinnipède. A fifth has a ship's boy on a polar voyage mistaking, from a distance, the movement of a beach full of seals. A sixth points at the loud breath a seal takes on surfacing. And Alphonse Boudard, who was a great bender of words and should be read with caution, proposed a deformation of pédé comme un fox, the fox terrier having a reputation for mounting anything regardless of sex.