IdiomAnimals
French
FrenchUn cheval de Troie
Meaning: A gift or arrangement that conceals a hostile purpose.
Literally: A Trojan horse
Example: “Cette application gratuite était un cheval de Troie pour voler des données.” — That free app was a Trojan horse for stealing data.
English equivalent: A Trojan horse
Equivalents in other languages
Vietnamese: Cõng rắn cắn gà nhà Literally: To carry a snake home to bite your own chickens
English: a Trojan horse
Origin: From the hollow wooden horse by which the Greeks entered Troy, as told in the Odyssey and the Aeneid. Computing borrowed the term for concealed malware, which is now the sense most people meet first.
More French idioms
- Mettre les bouchées doubles To work twice as hard in order to catch up.
- La dive bouteille Wine, treated with mock reverence.
- Boire le calice jusqu'à la lie To endure an ordeal all the way to its most humiliating end.
- La cerise sur le gâteau A final touch that completes something already good — often said sarcastically of a last…
- Ni chair ni poisson Neither one thing nor the other; impossible to classify.
- Clouer le bec à quelqu'un To silence someone completely, usually with an unanswerable reply.
Explore another collection: False Friends
Words that look familiar in another language but mean something else entirely.
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