Un écorché vif
Meaning: Someone painfully hypersensitive to everything around them.
Language: French
Literally: A flayed-alive man
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: An écorché is the anatomical figure drawn or modeled with the skin removed to show the muscles, standard in art training since the Renaissance. Applied to a person, it means having no protective layer at all.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- L'huile de coude — Hard physical effort; elbow grease.
- Couper l'herbe sous le pied de quelqu'un — To forestall someone by acting first.
- Ne pas mâcher ses mots — To speak with complete bluntness.
- Il faut tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche avant de parler — Think carefully before you speak.
- En avoir gros sur le cœur — To be full of unspoken hurt or resentment.
- En son for intérieur — In one's heart of hearts; in private conscience.
More French idioms
- Se croire sorti de la cuisse de Jupiter — To have an absurdly high opinion of one's own importance.
- Le tonneau des Danaïdes — A hopeless undertaking that consumes everything and is never finished.
- Au diable vauvert — Miles from anywhere; the back of beyond.
- Il n'y a pas le feu au lac — There's no rush.
- Par l'opération du Saint-Esprit — By some unexplained miracle — said sarcastically of something nobody will account for.
- Au creux de la vague — At a low point, with the expectation that things will rise again.
From our untranslatable words
- Épanouissement — The full flourishing of a person — blooming into your most complete, radiant self. More t…
- Ressourcement — The act of returning to one's roots or origins to find renewal — going back to a place, t…
- Dépaysement — The disorienting yet often pleasant feeling of being far from home, immersed in the unfam…
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