Se chatouiller le poireau / S'astiquer la colonne
Meaning: To masturbate, said of a man. Vulgar.
Language: French
Literally: To tickle the leek / to polish the column
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
- 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.
- Couper les cheveux en quatre — To over-analyze or split hairs.
- Se regarder le nombril — To be self-centered or narcissistic.
- Tomaten auf den Augen haben — To be oblivious to what's right in front of you.
- Die Daumen drücken — To wish someone good luck (like crossing fingers).
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.
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