Friday, April 22, 2005

Rangeons un peu

(un) tiroir = a drawer. Very boring in itself, but the word is used in a couple of expressions:
  • racler les fonds de tiroir = to scrape some money together (literally to scrape the bottom of the drawers). I'm not sure why, but it is very tempting, although wrong, to spell racler with an accent ("râcler")
  • avoir un polichinelle dans le tiroir = to have a bun in the oven. A polichinelle is one of these old-fashioned, borderline scary (if you ask me) puppets, also used in the other expression un secret de polichinelle (an open secret)




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