Un mauvais coucheur
Meaning: A cantankerous, difficult person.
Language: French
Literally: A bad bedfellow
Category: Animals
Origin: Travelers at inns routinely shared beds with strangers, so being a bad one to sleep beside was a real and commonly exercised judgment. The literal circumstance vanished and the assessment stayed.
More idioms — Animals
- Ronger son frein — To wait in barely contained impatience.
- Jeter sa gourme — To sow one's wild oats.
- Tirer à hue et à dia — To pull in opposite directions; to work at cross purposes.
- Une grenouille de bénitier — A woman conspicuously and tiresomely devout.
- Faire le pied de grue — To stand around waiting for a long time.
- Une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps — A single encouraging sign does not prove a trend.
More French idioms
- Un cordon-bleu — An outstanding cook.
- Il y a loin de la coupe aux lèvres — Much can still go wrong between intention and result.
- Né avec une cuillère d'argent dans la bouche — Born into wealth and advantage.
- Des économies de bouts de chandelle — Petty economies that save nothing worth having.
- Un étouffe-chrétien — Food so dense and stodgy it is hard to swallow.
- Mettre de l'eau dans son vin — To moderate one's demands or soften one's position.
From our compliments & insults
- Espèce de patate — You dim bulb — a potato being the very picture of inert, unthinking stodginess.
- Quel râleur / quelle râleuse — You never stop moaning — everything is a complaint, nothing is ever good enough.
- Peau de vache — A mean, difficult, and unpleasant person — tough and unyielding like tanned hide.
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