Une chiffe molle
Meaning: A spineless person with no will of their own.
Language: French
Literally: A soft rag
Category: Daily Life
Origin: A chiffe is a limp scrap of cloth, and the doubling with molle makes the point twice over. The phrase attacks the absence of resistance rather than any particular failing.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Être au septième ciel — To be in a state of perfect happiness.
- Mettre la clé sous la porte — To shut up shop; to go out of business.
- Ne pas être grand clerc — Not to be much of an expert — used to say that no expertise is needed to see something.
- Déménager à la cloche de bois — To do a moonlight flit, leaving without paying the rent.
- Rater le coche — To miss an opportunity through being too slow.
- Être coiffé au poteau — To be beaten by a hair right at the finish.
More French idioms
- 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.
From our proverbs
- April and May are the keys of the year. — Spring's weather sets the course for the whole year's growth and harvest.
- April borrows three days of March, and they are ill. — Early spring often turns wintry again, as harsh as the month just past.
- Argus at home, but a mole abroad. — Sharp-eyed over one's own household, yet blind to everything beyond it.
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