Se chatouiller le poireau
Meaning: To masturbate, said of a man. Vulgar.
Language: French
Literally: To tickle the leek / to polish the column
Example: “Dans cette comédie grivoise, l'expression « se chatouiller le poireau » fait rire toute la salle.” — In this bawdy comedy, the slang phrase for masturbating gets the whole audience laughing.
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Almost any long straight thickish object has served French as a word for the penis, so the ways of naming this are many — peigner la girafe works off the animal's neck. The leek is in Rabelais, in Pantagruel, though not yet explicitly: a vigorous old man is comme le poireau, la tête blanche et la queue verte, white-headed and green-tailed, vert here meaning lively or ribald. Only in the 18th century does the vegetable plainly stand for the organ, which is also when se dégourdir le poireau appears, of a man returning to use after a long abstinence. The column is precisely dated: Cellard and Rey put its arrival as a phallic symbol at 1820, when the Vendôme column went up in Paris and its opponents took to calling it a bronze phallus. The polishing motion supplied the rest.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- Se magner la rondelle — To get a move on. Vulgar.
- Avoir les deux pieds dans le même sabot — To be incapable of acting; to sit there doing nothing.
- Y a pas à tortiller du cul — Enough hesitating — a decision has to be made. Also: this is simply undeniable.
- Ne pas avoir les yeux en face des trous — To be unable to see what is right in front of you — usually because you are barely awake.
- navel-gaze — To be absorbed in oneself and one's own concerns to an excessive degree.
- be a pain in the neck — To be very annoying.
More French idioms
- Avoir la poisse — To have persistent, clinging bad luck.
- Avoir un coup de pompe — To be hit by a sudden wave of exhaustion.
- Ça se bouscule au portillon — There's a crush; also, crudely, of an urgent need to be sick.
- Tirer le portrait — To take someone's photograph.
- Manger sur le pouce — To eat in a hurry, standing up.
- Cucul la praline — Twee; soppy; embarrassingly naive.
From our compliments & insults
- Quel râleur / quelle râleuse — You never stop moaning — everything is a complaint, nothing is ever good enough.
- Peau de vache — A mean, difficult, and unpleasant person — tough and unyielding like tanned hide.
- Tu as une cervelle de moineau — You're scatterbrained and forgetful.