Un combat homérique
Meaning: A struggle of epic scale and duration.
Language: French
Literally: A Homeric combat
Category: Daily Life
Origin: From the Iliad, whose single combats run for hundreds of lines and involve the gods taking sides. Sports writing keeps the phrase in constant employment.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Un homme averti en vaut deux — Advance warning doubles a person's effectiveness.
- Honi soit qui mal y pense — Let anyone who reads something improper into this be the one disgraced.
- À huis clos — In closed session, with the public excluded.
- Mettre à l'index — To blacklist something or exclude it from acceptable use.
- Un violon d'Ingres — A serious passion pursued outside one's actual profession.
- Un coup de Jarnac — An unexpected decisive stroke, delivered within the rules but not quite sportingly.
More French idioms
- Jeux de mains, jeux de vilains — Horseplay ends badly.
- On ne peut être juge et partie — Nobody may rule on a matter in which they have an interest.
- Un jugement de Salomon — A ruling of great wisdom that exposes the truth by testing it.
- C'est kif-kif — It makes no difference at all.
- Une fine lame — A highly skilled practitioner.
- Sur l'air des lampions — Chanted rhythmically on three insistent notes, as a crowd does.
From our compliments & insults
- Peau de vache — A mean, difficult, and unpleasant person — tough and unyielding like tanned hide.
- Tu as une cervelle de moineau — You're scatterbrained and forgetful.
- Tu es mon rayon de soleil — A warm way to tell someone they brighten your day.
Browse all compliments & insults →
Loading the full interactive collection…