Donkey : noun Wild or domestic mammal smaller than the horse, with a large head and long ears, with a generally gray coat.
A narrow-minded individual, incapable of understanding anything.
Donkey bugger! : you idiot.
Ass's ass: imbecile.
Play the donkey to get sound: play the fool to obtain useful information.
Make the donkey's meal: drink only at the end of the meal.
Hold the donkey by the tail: urinate.
Packed donkey: ignorant, clumsy.
Donkey skin: diploma.
To be ridden like a donkey: to have a big penis.
Bend like a donkey: bend hard.
The flies have changed donkeys: the situation has changed dramatically.
Play the donkey to get sound: play the fool to obtain useful information.
Debutted donkey: a man too addicted to women.
- Be like Buridan's donkey : Hesitate indefinitely; not knowing which side to take.
Jean Buridan, born at the end of the XNUMXth century, was a philosopher. If his written work does not evoke this donkey, which had become famous, it is said that, in his lessons, to discuss certain philosophical theses, and in particular to oppose the proponents of determinism and those of free will (of which he was a part), he evoked the story of this donkey who will end up dying of both hunger and thirst because he will never have been able to decide whether he should start by satiating or quenching his thirst.
This is the classic thesis on the origin of this expression.
- For a point, Martin lost his donkey : said when someone misses a deal for little, loses something important for some stupid reason, through negligence, for lack of very simple precautions; gives up something important to him, believing to get something more important in return, but ultimately of little interest.
According to Eugène Boutmy, in his Typographers' slang dictionary published in 1883, there are two explanations for this expression: The first would come from two ecclesiastics, one of whom was called Martin, who fought over the abbey of Sonane. Martin lost the lawsuit because the incorrect placement of a period in a sentence in the acre of sale that he presented completely altered the text and invalidated the act.
The second that the French writer Pierre-Marie Quitard (1792-1882) presents as being the correct one in his Etymological, historical and anecdotal dictionary of proverbs published in 1842, comes from the following story: The Abbot of Asello, in Italy, had the following inscribed on the door of the abbey: “Porta, patents esto. Nulli claudaris honesto. (Door remains open. Do not be closed to any honest man). But by mistake or ignorance, the engraver made a mistake and wrote: “Porta, patents esto nulli. Claudaris honesto. (Door stays open for no one. Be closed to the honest man). The pope learning the content of this inscription withdrew the abbey of Asello from Martin and gave it to another abbot, who not only corrected the fault, but added: “Uno pro, puncto caruit Martinus Asello. (For just one point, Martin lost Asello). And like Asello is very close to latin asellus which means “little donkey”, the proverb was born from this last inscription.
- Pass / jump from rooster to donkey : In a discussion or in a writing, switch abruptly from one subject to another, without transition or connection.
Using inconsistent comments.
Those who have been confronted with the education of adolescents know that they are quick to (attempt) to move from one subject which disturbs them to one which has no connection, which interests them or does not put them in difficulty.
The passage "from the rooster to the donkey", they know perfectly how to practice it when it suits them.
Unfortunately, today the why of the donkey versus the rooster has been completely lost and there seems to be no really satisfactory explanation for the presence of these two animals in the expression.
All we know is that it is very old, since in. XNUMXth century, we were already saying protrude from the rooster to the ass, then in the XNUMXth century, to jump from rooster to ass.
Claude Duneton, without being able to provide proof, evokes a possible confusion between asne et ane (name used until the end of the XNUMXth century for dog). But asne (the donkey) pronouncing in the same way, then transforming itself into donkey, it is he who would have been remembered.
The old version of the expression (with protrude) would then have evoked bizarre relationships between a rooster and a duck, but without being able to really establish a link with the meaning that remains to us.