Vider son sac
Meaning: To say everything one has been holding back.
Language: French
Literally: To empty one's bag
Category: Body & Senses
Origin: Advocates once carried their case papers in a sack and emptied it before the court to present the whole matter. The sense of a complete and slightly aggressive unburdening is unchanged.
More idioms — Body & Senses
- À tue-tête — At the top of one's voice.
- Dire ses quatre vérités à quelqu'un — To tell someone exactly what is wrong with them.
- Avoir la main verte — To have a gift for growing plants.
- Entrer dans le vif du sujet — To get to the heart of the matter.
- Tomber dans les pommes — Suddenly losing consciousness — possibly derived from the older expression 'être dans les…
- Avoir la moutarde qui monte au nez — To be getting angry.
More French idioms
- De la poudre de perlimpinpin — A worthless remedy sold with great confidence.
- Un lit de Procuste — A standard imposed regardless of what it does to the thing being measured.
- Le rocher de Sisyphe — A labor that must be repeated forever and never completes.
- Le supplice de Tantale — Having what one wants permanently in sight and permanently out of reach.
- Une solution de continuité — A break or gap — not, despite appearances, a solution to anything.
- Demain, on rase gratis — A promise perpetually postponed.
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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