Trouver chaussure à son pied
Meaning: To find exactly the right match, usually a partner.
Language: French
Literally: To find a shoe for one's foot
Category: Daily Life
Origin: A shoe is only good if it fits this foot, so the figure is about suitability rather than quality. It applies to jobs and houses as well as to people, though the romantic use dominates.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Ne pas y aller par quatre chemins — To come straight to the point.
- Tous les chemins mènent à Rome — There are many routes to the same result.
- Un chevalier d'industrie — A swindler who lives by his wits at others' expense.
- La cheville ouvrière — The linchpin — the person or thing on which an entire operation turns.
- Une chiffe molle — A spineless person with no will of their own.
- Être au septième ciel — To be in a state of perfect happiness.
More French idioms
- Mettre la clé sous la porte — To shut up shop; to go out of business.
- Ne pas être grand clerc — Not to be much of an expert — used to say that no expertise is needed to see something.
- Déménager à la cloche de bois — To do a moonlight flit, leaving without paying the rent.
- Rater le coche — To miss an opportunity through being too slow.
- Être coiffé au poteau — To be beaten by a hair right at the finish.
- Donner de la confiture à un cochon — To waste something fine on someone incapable of appreciating it.
From our proverbs
- Steal the goose, and give the giblets in alms. — Token charity from what you stole does nothing to redeem the theft.
- Anger is short-lived in a good man. — A good person's anger passes quickly and leaves no lasting grudge.
- Keep from the anger of a great man. — Avoid provoking the powerful, whose wrath can do you real harm.
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