Sauver les meubles
Meaning: To salvage what matters from a disaster.
Language: French
Literally: To save the furniture
Category: Daily Life
Origin: A 19th-century metaphor that needs no unpacking: with the water rising or the fire spreading and nobody in danger, the reflex is to get out whatever can still be got out. What is worth knowing is how much meubles once covered. In the 12th century the word meant any movable property — biens meubles, as against immovable ones — which took in clothes, weapons and livestock as readily as the things we now call furniture. Only in the 17th century did it narrow to what stands in your rooms.
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.
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More French idioms
- Se casser la margoulette — To come a cropper; to take a bad fall.
- Se faire du mouron — To worry oneself.
- 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.
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