Learn French Idioms With Me #1/100
Let’s take a fun language-learning break together.
In learning a new language, you’ll find that idioms add color to conversations or written text. The reason for this is that the meaning of an idiom cannot be deducted from the meaning of the component words.
As a language learner, you may even find certain idioms humorous (such as “to get someone’s goat” or “earworm” in English). Well, consider yourself blessed, as native speakers won’t! Idioms are so ingrained in their vocabulary that they no longer notice how funny or random some expressions actually are.
Learning idioms in your target language will help you better understand cultural meaning and context. For example, have you noticed how many baseball-related idioms exist in American English? (To touch base, out of left field, right off the bat, to name a few.) This only attests to how loved the sport is in the U.S. of A.
So, I invite you to come along on a journey of discovering interesting, often-used French idioms that I am learning at the moment and which I hope will help you broaden your vocab as well. The one I chose for this post is chercher midi à quatorze heures.
This literally translates to “to search for noon at 2 p.m.” Remember that the French use the 24-hour system, which means that quatorze heures (14:00) is 2 p.m. The meaning of the idiom is to look for something that isn’t there or to unnecessarily complicate things. As noon is a time of day that is easy to identify (the sun is at its highest point, and the ol’ tummy’s rumbling for lunch), it is useless to look for it at any other time of day.
Apparently, in the sixteenth century, the expression was chercher midi à onze heures (literally: to look for noon at 11 a.m.). Although the meaning may seem similar — to look for something that isn’t there —the idiom was intended to stigmatize scroungers. (One could also argue that someone craving brunch should not be judged so harshly!)
The expression in its current form became popular in the seventeenth century. So popular that the ballet performed at the Louvre in January 1620 under the reign of Louis XIII was named Le ballet des chercheurs de midi à quatorze heures.
A few expressions in French that are close in meaning or related to today’s idiom are:
- chercher de poux (literally: to look for lice; actual meaning: to nit-pick, to quibble);
- chercher la petite bête (literally: to look for the small animal; actual meaning: to be nit-picky, to find fault);
- (se) faire une montagne d’une taupinière (which literally means to make a mountain out of a molehill).
I hope you had a bit of fun reading as I had in researching this piece. I wish you good luck in your language-learning journey, and don’t forget to take it easy — learning should be light and fun once in a while. Even though it pays off to be meticulous, it’s OK not to “look for noon at 2 p.m.”
Thank you for reading this far! Binge on parts 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 .
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