Tirer son coup

Literally: To fire one's shot

Example: “Dans le film, le héros ne pense qu'à tirer son coup.” — In the movie, the hero only thinks about getting laid.

Origin: The firearm reading is the obvious one and also the right one: a gun of the period fired a single shot and then needed long manual reloading, which made the metaphor unsubtle enough to last. The underlying sense of coup (blow, stroke, shot) is much older — the poet Guillaume Coquillart already uses it this way in the 15th century — and before firearms spread, the equivalents came from the tournament ground: rompre des lances or rompre du bois (to break lances, to break wood), the second still in Montaigne in 1580. Tirer son coup itself was current by the 17th century. It normally carries a dismissive, self-centered edge, casting the other person as a means to an end, and it has since been claimed for women's use as well, carrying exactly the same edge.