Vache : noun La cow and the female du Taurus.
Rude, bastard. What a cow!
Nasty, severe person who passes nothing, takes revenge or punishes mercilessly.
He was a cow with me: he was hard, ruthless.
This owner's cow; He was a cow like everything to me; she is a cow, his wife.
Cowhide: mean person. It's real cowhide; it is rather cowhide (see below the origin of this expression).
Action, thing: It's cowardly to have done that; a very cowardly criticism.
It's cow! : also said of a setback, of bad luck.
In a weaker sense (speaking of a person we have to complain about): Ah! the cows, they forgot me!
Cow: soft man, good for nothing, who denounces his comrades; man without courage
Cow: soft and lazy person.
Make a bad blow: a dirty blow.
Blow in cow: low blow.
A working cow: important work.
Cow love: where there are more strokes than caresses.
Kick in cow: side kick, unpredictable (see below the origin of this expression).
To kick, to kick badly: to act as a traitor, hypocritically, against someone.
A cow of time: a bad time; bad weather.
A motorcycle cow: a beautiful motorcycle.
A problem cow: a hell of a problem.
The cow ! : exclamation expressing astonishment, indignation, admiration,
surprise.
Oh damn ! : expression marking astonishment, admiration.
To be as big as a cow, very fat.
Band of cows: insulting a group of people.
My cow: familiar interjection.
In / to the cow: hard, severe; bastard; difficult, hard; insult; vicious, painful; nasty, unfair; wicked, traitor, vicious; as a traitor.
Bad cow: tough and mean person.
Cow wine: milk.
I received one of those blows, cow! The cow ! how beautiful it is !
To howl like a cow: to cry.
Fat cow: too fat woman.
Cowardice: dirty trick, bad trick, nastiness, deviousness.
Eating/eating rabid cow: to be reduced to severe deprivation, to suffer misery, to live with difficulty, in bad conditions, not to earn a good living, to be in a bad financial situation, to suffer from social injustice, to be unhappy (see below for the origin of this expression).
Lean period: when there is no money, period of scarcity (see below for the origin of this expression).
Period of fat cows: when you have money, period of abundance (see below the origin of this expression).
Cow: police officer, town sergeant, security officer; snitch, traitor; judge (insult).
Take the cow by the balls: take things backwards, start at the end.
Cow grass: clover with cards.
Play the cow: laze around. Stay in bed for a long time; drag yourself from place to place without having the courage to do anything.
Enraged cow: beef in brine, boiled beef (in college jargon).
Floor of the cows: soil, earth, dry land. (see origin of the expression below).
Descent to the cows: forced landing.
Go to the cows: crash, land in a field or far from the airstrip.
Not having kept cows together: not being intimate.
A cow would not find her calf there, thought to herself in great confusion.
It suits him like an apron to a cow: it suits him very badly (see origin of the expression below).
Everyone has their own job, the cows will be well looked after: everyone minds their own business and everything will be better.
Speak French like a Spanish cow: speak French badly (see below for the origin of this expression).
To rain / to fall like a pissing cow: to rain very hard (see below for the origin of this expression).
Cow keeper: peasant woman.
Cow skin: severe, harsh, very strict, unfair, bad person; bastard; term of contempt.
Cow weather: heavy weather.
Red like a cow's tail: yellowish red, dull.
The devil is on his cows: a man pursued by misfortune.
Like a cow watching trains go by: with a passive, stupid look.
Cow on wheels: police biker.
Cow love (for pleasure), where there are more strokes than caresses.
Black / full / drunk like a cow: sated; drunk.
Bend like a cow: painful and soft bandaison.
Smoke like a cow: smoke a lot, emit a lot of smoke.
Girl of the last category; alluding to her huge nipples, her only beauty, and also to her ruminant nonchalance.
- Old cow: Prostitute, woman of bad morals, who gives herself up to the first comer; old woman ; insult or insult to a woman or a homosexual.
- In the middle, it designates the "cow" that is to say the indicator or in general the one who has failed.
- Cash cow: rich man, easy to tax, galore who subscribes to shady shows, prostitute, good deal that pays well; someone who provides for the needs of another; the one who is exploited; Income source ; source of income that is unduly exploited
- To have / to take the cow and the calf: to marry a pregnant woman; abandoned woman with a child; marry a pregnant girl.
– Mort aux vaches: abbreviated as MAV or three dots tattooed in a triangle on the part between the thumb and the index finger, this hollow part is called the snuff box. Slogan against the police; expression against authorities (see below the origin of this expression).
Threatening cry (against a homosexual); to death the men of the police! : this formula is also used against judges and police officers.
- The sacred cows: the very large companies listed on the stock exchange.
Other expressions taking again "death to the cows": death to the cows and down the chiourme; death to cows and donkeys; death to the cows, we will hang them, the donkeys.
- Cow's cross: Mark with a knife or razor, but most often with a piece of sugar (notch reputed to be indelible) in the shape of a St. Andrew's cross on the cheek of someone (often a prostitute) to punish him for 'an infidelity or a betrayal.
- To have / to take the cow and the calf: to marry a girl who is pregnant of another.
- Cash cow: gonorrhea.
– The expression: “The floor of the cows”: Firm ground.
This expression dates from the XNUMXth century when it was first said the cow floor.
On the old wooden boats, the sailors walked on a floor on which possible encounters with cows, animals of the meadows, were extremely rare.
It is by simple opposition to their own floor, usually located on the water, that they have got into the habit of designating dry land as being this "floor" where the cows are much easier to pass and where it is it's good to come back after a long stay at sea. It was also said in the past: "There is nothing like the bare ground" to indicate that there is much less danger in traveling by land than by sea.
– The expression: “It suits him like an apron to a cow”: it suits him very badly.
In its current form, this expression comes to us from the beginning of the 1723th century. But we can read in the middle of the previous century in the French writer Jacques-Nicolas Dampierre de la Salle (1793-XNUMX): “to suit like an apron to a Spanish cow”. This bringing together of a piece of clothing and an animal has long been used to express not only the ridiculousness of someone who dresses very badly (this is the initial image), but also by extension, the association two objects that the speaker thinks they have nothing to do with each other.
Moreover, the French philologist, also publisher and translator of Latin texts and literary historian Charles Nisard (1809-1889) in his work Curiosities of French etymology appeared in 1863, quoted as "slippers for a cat, but also a shirt for a pig, a bonnet for a goat, a bridle for a gosling, a fly for a louse, a bonnet for a goat, gloves for a dog ".
– The expression “To rain like a pissing cow”: To rain in abundance, to pour.
Starting from a small rain that would have been compared to human urination, we understand very well that a very heavy rain could have given rise, on the part of a very fine observer of the second half of the XNUMXth century (period of 'matching the expression), to a comparison with such a spill of liquid of bovine origin.
Some disgruntled spirits will say that the elephant is crushing the cow in this area. Certainly ! But at that time, it was all the same much rarer to encounter elephants grazing, and, in general, we dare to make comparisons only with what we know well.
– “Speak French like a Spanish cow”: speak French (very) badly.
There are several hypotheses on the origin of this expression which is attested from 1640.
The most classic, but not necessarily the correct one, comes from an alteration of Basque ("speaking French like a Spanish Basque"), because vases ou basin, in the XNUMXth century meant a Gascon or a Basque.
According to the French linguist, lexicographer and writer Alain Rey (1945-2020), the most likely origins of this expression would come from a combination of pejorative things specific to the time. Like a cow in general was, and still is, an intensive term with a strongly negative connotation. And at the time of the appearance of the expression, Spanish was also an unpleasant qualifier: one said indeed to pay to the Spanish for someone who "paid" by giving blows or one designated a boast of "espanade". .
So the combination of these two terms would have been a very negative way of qualifying the way of speaking bad French.
– The expression “Cow skin” and “The cow! » : Said of a wicked, severe, ruthless person – The wicked, sneaky one!
Sometimes the cow will “cow kick,” that is, suddenly kick sideways with one leg. It is this gesture that has also caused this animal to be considered sneaky or mean.
According to the lexicographer and specialist in linguistics and literature Gaston Esnault (1874-1971), this meaning of cow appeared in 1880. This is where the two expressions come from. In the first, there is a reinforcement by the pejorative swallower that the word sometimes takes skin, as in a old skin.
Today, instead of “The cow! », it looks more like the bastard! Or another even more vulgar term where it is a question of buckets of water.
By antiphrase, “The cow! can also be an exclamation of admiration.
– The expression “Cow kick”: An action done as a traitor or a hypocrite, an unfair process.
The cow sometimes kicks its hoof forwards or to the side when you least expect it, which leads to its labeling as sneaky and which has given rise to slang expressions.
For a cow kick, the origin is clear and the figurative meaning of “acting like a traitor” is self-evident.
In conversation it is sometimes reduced to a nasty blow. This phrase has existed since the middle of the XNUMXth century, but at the end of the XNUMXth century it was already said kick like a cow with exactly the same meaning.
– The expressions “Lean cows – Fat cows”: Scarcity – Abundance.
It is easy to understand that in times of scarcity, cows are thin because they eat little, whereas they are very fat in times of plenty.
The image is therefore very clear, but why cows?
According to chapter 41 of Genesis (*), it was during a dream that Pharaoh saw the announcement of two successive periods, one of seven years of abundance symbolized by seven fat cows, then another of seven years of scarcity, represented by seven lean cows. It is these cows that have remained the symbol found today in these two expressions.
As for the seven, it has a magical side since the references to this number are legion: the seven deadly sins, the seven skies surrounding the Earth, (being in seventh heaven), the seven wonders of the world, the seven musical notes, etc
(*) The genesis : premier book of la Bible which contains the account of la Creation.
– The expression “Eating mad cow”: living in misery – Leading a life of hard deprivation.
this expression dates from the XNUMXth century in the form eat the mad cow. Very poor people not being really careful about the quality of food, they could be led to eat the meat of animals excluded from normal consumption for reasons of hygiene or illness.
It would then be the mixture of lead a frenzied life specific to those who must struggle to manage to survive and eat sick cow which would have given rise to this expression "Eating rabid cow".
– The expression "Death to the cows!" “: Death to the cops!
From 1844, the word cow was used in the slang of thieves to designate police or gendarmes, then later informers. It would only be an 1879 that “Mort aux vaches! would have appeared.
Related article: Cow (slang synonyms).
– Quote from the French writer Romain Gary (1914-1980): “Happiness is real garbage and a cow’s skin” in The life ahead - 1975 (published under the name of Émile Ajar).
– Quote from the American writer John Fante (1909-1983): “Damn how stupid you can be when you put your mind to it. You must be really unhappy. » in the novel Ask the Dust (ask the dust) (1939).
Three quotes from the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Destouches dit Céline (1894-1961):
– “We are never very unhappy when an adult leaves, that always means one cow less on earth, we tell ourselves, while for a child, it is still less certain. There is a future.” In Journey to the End of the Night - 1932.
- "It is unfortunate that they remain so cows with so much love in reserve, people" in Journey to the End of the Night - 1932.
- "They would like to kill me, my emulators, even my little students, by sorrows, by nasty words, make me perish under the bites of a plethora of cockroaches, under the venoms of an atrocious proliferation of frighteningly rogue aspics , martyrivores. But my cowhide protects me, so far I have survived. " in School of corpses -1938.