Prendre une veste
Meaning: To suffer a defeat, especially at the polls.
Language: French
Literally: To take a jacket
Category: Daily Life
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.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Pédaler dans la semoule — To be confused and getting nowhere.
- Avoir d'autres chats à fouetter — To have more important things to do.
- Avoir le cul entre deux chaises — To be indecisive, caught between two options.
- Les carottes sont cuites — It's too late, nothing can be done.
- Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof — I don't understand anything at all.
- Schwein haben — Getting unexpectedly lucky — rooted in medieval tournaments where the last-place finisher…
More French idioms
- Ça ne casse pas trois pattes à un canard — It's nothing special or impressive.
- C'est comme pisser dans un violon — A completely pointless effort.
- Avoir le cafard — To feel depressed or down.
- Poser un lapin — To stand someone up on a date.
- Tomber dans les pommes — Suddenly losing consciousness — possibly derived from the older expression 'être dans les…
- Avoir la moutarde qui monte au nez — To be getting angry.
From our proverbs
- Give him an inch, and he'll take an ell. — Allowing someone a small concession encourages them to demand progressively larger ones.
- God never measures men by inches. — Height matters less than character; true worth is invisible to the eye.
- Industry is fortune's right hand and frugality her left. — Hard work and careful spending together create wealth; neither alone suffices.
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