Tomber comme un couperet
Meaning: To land suddenly and irrevocably, as of bad news.
Language: French
Literally: To fall like a cleaver
Category: Daily Life
Origin: The couperet is the guillotine blade, and what the phrase borrows is not the violence but the finality — once it drops there is no stage at which anything can be reconsidered.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Faire la cour à quelqu'un — To court someone romantically.
- La cour des grands — The top tier, where the serious players are.
- Une fois n'est pas coutume — One exception does not establish a habit.
- Pendre la crémaillère — To hold a housewarming.
- Riche comme Crésus — Enormously wealthy.
- La critique est aisée, mais l'art est difficile — Faulting a work costs nothing compared with making one.
More French idioms
- Tant va la cruche à l'eau qu'à la fin elle se casse — Repeated risk-taking eventually catches up with you.
- Porter la culotte — To be the one who makes the decisions in a household.
- N'en avoir cure — To be entirely indifferent to something.
- Virer sa cuti — To undergo a complete change of convictions.
- Au grand dam de quelqu'un — To someone's considerable detriment or annoyance.
- Trouver son chemin de Damas — To undergo a sudden and total conversion.
From our compliments & insults
- C'est une vraie chèvre — They're hopelessly stubborn and infuriating — a goat that refuses to be moved.
- Casse-pieds — A massive bore or pain in the neck — someone who wears you down with their irritating way…
- Espèce de patate — You dim bulb — a potato being the very picture of inert, unthinking stodginess.
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