Une nuit blanche
Meaning: A sleepless night.
Language: French
Literally: A white night
Category: Daily Life
Origin: 18th century, first attested on 30 October 1771 in a letter from the Marquise du Deffand to Horace Walpole describing her worst insomnia. In French blanc frequently marks an absence — voix blanche, tir à blanc, mariage blanc, faire chou blanc — which likely explains it. A rival account points to Saint Petersburg, where French courtiers kept late hours through summers that never fully darkened.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Une parole d'évangile — An incontestable truth.
- Être aux abonnés absents — To be unreachable, or to fail to show up when needed.
- Accuser réception — To acknowledge that something has been received.
- Par acquit de conscience — To do something merely to be sure, so as to leave nothing on your conscience.
- La perfide Albion — A hostile nickname for England, cast as habitually treacherous in its diplomacy.
- Alea jacta est — The decision is irrevocable and there is no turning back.
More French idioms
- Être comme l'âne de Buridan — To be so paralyzed between two equally attractive options that you choose neither.
- Rire comme une baleine — To laugh uproariously, with your mouth wide open.
- Un vent à décorner les bœufs — A ferociously strong wind.
- La bave du crapaud n'atteint pas la blanche colombe — Insults from a contemptible source cannot touch the person they target.
- Savoir où le bât blesse — To know exactly where the real difficulty or sore point lies.
- Faire un bœuf — To improvise music together; to hold a jam session.
From our tongue twisters
- Un chasseur sachant chasser doit savoir chasser sans son chien. — The classic French 'ch' / 's' tangler.
- Les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches? — A merciless duel between 'ch' and 's'.
- Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès. — An 's' / 'si' minefield.
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