Séance tenante
Meaning: Then and there, without adjournment.
Language: French
Literally: The session holding
Category: Daily Life
Origin: A legal formula: a matter settled séance tenante was decided while the court still sat rather than being deferred. It carries a note of decisiveness that immédiatement does not.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Un coup de semonce — A deliberate warning, delivered before real consequences.
- Un train de sénateur — A slow, dignified gait.
- Nourri dans le sérail — Brought up inside an institution and knowing all its workings.
- Ce n'est pas une sinécure — It is not an easy job.
- Une chasse aux sorcières — A campaign of persecution driven by suspicion rather than evidence.
- Pas besoin de sortir de Saint-Cyr — It doesn't take a genius to work that out.
More French idioms
- Faire table rase — To sweep everything away and start from nothing.
- Prendre le taureau par les cornes — To tackle a difficulty head-on instead of avoiding it.
- Les vaches maigres — A period of hardship and scarcity — the opposite of les vaches grasses.
- Les vaches grasses — A period of plenty.
- Aller comme un tablier à une vache — To suit someone appallingly badly.
- Adorer le veau d'or — To make money one's god.
From our proverbs
- Flowers are the pledge of fruit. — Beautiful beginnings promise productive outcomes, so nurture promising signs carefully fo…
- It is one thing to flourish and another to fight. — Thriving requires different skills than defending oneself; prosperity and conflict demand…
- Happy is he who knows his follies in his youth. — Self-awareness in youth allows course correction before mistakes become entrenched life p…
Loading the full interactive collection…