Sans crier gare
Meaning: Without any warning at all.
Language: French
Literally: Without crying look-out
Category: Daily Life
Origin: Gare! was the shout of warning in a street or a workshop, the ancestor of the modern gare à toi. Doing something without it means giving no one the chance to get out of the way.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Une promesse de Gascon — A promise nobody expects to be kept.
- Vouer aux gémonies — To denounce someone publicly and utterly.
- Cousin germain — A first cousin.
- Faire partie du Gotha — To belong to the highest society.
- Des goûts et des couleurs on ne discute pas — There is no arguing with personal preference.
- Mettre le grappin sur quelque chose — To get one's hooks into something and not let go.
More French idioms
- De gré ou de force — Willingly or unwillingly; one way or another.
- Le Grenelle de quelque chose — A large multi-party negotiation convened to settle a national issue.
- L'habit ne fait pas le moine — Appearances do not establish what someone is.
- C'est de l'hébreu — It is completely incomprehensible.
- Vieux comme Hérode — Extremely ancient.
- Un combat homérique — A struggle of epic scale and duration.
From our tongue twisters
- Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien. — The classic French 'ch' / 's' tangler.
- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? — A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.
- Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès. — An 's' / 'si' minefield.
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