FrenchSe mettre sur son trente-et-un
Meaning: To dress up in your very best clothes.
Literally: To put oneself on one's thirty-one
Example: “Pour le mariage de sa sœur, il s'est mis sur son trente-et-un.” — For his sister's wedding, he got all dressed up.
English equivalent: To dress to the nines
Origin: The number has never been explained for certain. The most cited theory derives it from trentain, said to be a luxurious medieval cloth whose warp had thirty hundred threads, so that putting on one's trentain meant wearing one's finest. The word trentain had another use: in jeu de paume, the ancestor of tennis, the Académie française recorded in 1762 that players "are trentain" when both stand at thirty, though no one has shown how that would lead to dressing up. The phrase is in use by the early 1900s.
Equivalents in other languages
English: dress to the nines
More French idioms
- Les doigts dans le nez To do something with the greatest of ease.
- Avoir un cœur d'artichaut To fall in love easily and often.
- Avoir le bras long To have influence and useful connections.
- Découvrir le pot aux roses To uncover a hidden secret.
- Être dans de beaux draps To be in a real mess.
- Se faire rouler dans la farine To be conned or deceived.
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