Prendre une veste

Literally: To take a jacket

Example: “Le maire sortant a pris une veste aux municipales.” — The incumbent mayor suffered a crushing defeat in the local elections.

Origin: The jacket is a pun on a completely different garment, and getting there takes a detour through card games. Capot, which now means the hood of a car, once meant a hooded cloak — the sense that gave French the capote, the long military greatcoat worn in the First World War. But in card games from the early 17th century, to be capot was to finish a hand without taking a single trick, and a player who is fait capot is thoroughly humiliated; German borrowed the word in that spirit and made it kaputt. The stroke that finished an opponent off was itself called a capote. Then, in the second half of the 19th century, somebody swapped one item of clothing for another and the card-table capote became a veste — a pun of the caliber that fills joke almanacs, and one nobody had any use for until they did, since prendre une capote was never said. It was first used of politicians losing elections, which remains its natural habitat, and spread from there to defeats of every kind.