Un temps de chien
Meaning: Filthy, miserable weather.
Language: French
Literally: A dog's weather
Category: Animals
Origin: Dog appears across French as an intensifier of wretchedness — un métier de chien, une vie de chien — reflecting the low status of working dogs rather than pets. The weather is bad enough that only a dog would be left out in it.
More idioms — Animals
- Donner de la confiture à un cochon — To waste something fine on someone incapable of appreciating it.
- Un corbeau — The anonymous author of poison-pen letters.
- Bayer aux corneilles — To stand around idly, staring into space.
- Un panier de crabes — A group whose members constantly undermine one another.
- Chat échaudé craint l'eau froide — One bad experience makes you wary even where there is no danger.
- Une faim de loup — Ravenous hunger.
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.
From our false friends
- Ignorer — Actually means 'to be unaware of' or 'not to know'. J'ignore la réponse = I don't know th…
- Déception — Actually means 'disappointment'. For deception (a trick), say tromperie.
- Monnaie — Actually means 'change' or 'coins'. Money in general is l'argent.
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