S'en battre l'œil / S'en tamponner le coquillard
Meaning: To not care in the slightest.
Language: French
Literally: To beat one's eye over it
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Both forms are vulgarities in polite dress. The œil here is not the organ of sight but its coarse slang sense, the anus — the same softening at work when mon œil ! (my eye!) stands in for something blunter — and the expression has carried that buried crudeness since the 17th century, La Fontaine included. Se tamponner le coquillard is far younger, cited by Aristide Bruant in 1901, and coquillard itself has never been explained: Alain Rey derives it from the vulgar senses of coquille (shell), 16th-century slang for the female genitals, while others read coquillard as slang for the eye and tamponner as simply to strike — as in autos tamponneuses, bumper cars — which folds the phrase back into the first form. It also attracted a tradition of absurd elaboration specifying what one beats the eye with: a rabbit's paw, a lobster's shin, a mammoth's tail, even a breaded beetle leg.
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- Tomaten auf den Augen haben — To be oblivious to what's right in front of you.
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More French idioms
- C'est dans mes cordes — It is within my competence; I can handle that.
- Filer un mauvais coton — To be going downhill — in health, or in one's situation generally.
- Tirer son coup — For a man, to have an orgasm. Vulgar.
- 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.
From our untranslatable words
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