Fish : noun Un fish is a animal lower vertebrate, living in thewater and equipped with fins.
To drown the fish: to create a diversion; do not respond, be evasive, do not respond directly, change
topic ; do not act, use dilatory maneuvers.
To drink / swallow the sea and the fish: to see always thirst, is said of a drunkard who is thirsty.
Don't give a fuck like a fish from an apple: indifference, making fun of everything and everyone.
Like a fish in water: in its element, where we like to be, at ease, with ease
Berate / treat like rotten fish: insult, reprimand, overwhelm with violent insults.
Teaching fish to swim: giving superfluous advice to an expert.
Rogom fish: glass of brandy, large glass of brandy.
Sleeping with the fish: drowning.
To be happy as a fish in water: perfectly happy.
Roll fried fish eyes: make languid eyes.
To be (happy) like a fish in water: to be comfortable, in
its element.
Swim like a fish: swim perfectly.
He would drink the sea and the fish: he has an unquenchable thirst.
Drowning fish: deliberately obscuring a case, so as to confuse the interlocutor (See the expression below).
The sauce makes the fish go through: these are the secondary qualities that make it possible to adapt to the overall mediocrity of a thing, of a situation.
Swallow the fish without sauce: coitus interrupted.
It is through the head that the fish rots, a slogan that stigmatizes intellectuals in a society.
End in a fishtail or end in a fishtail; start well and end badly, end badly, end sadly, end without anything interesting, something disappointing or a satisfactory conclusion.
April Fools: April prank, hoax that we do to someone April 1st.
Fishtail: motorist who makes a fishtail to another driver: who suddenly falls back in front of him after having passed him.
To be neither flesh nor fish: indecisive, indefinable.
Feed the fish: get seasick and vomit.
Change the water fish: urinate, piss (man).
A big fish: a prominent figure.
Big fish: important person (often criminal), important person to be arrested.
Scare fish: pimp of girls.
Blowfish: give through the nostrils, as some cigarette smokers do, what is sucked in through the mouth.
Eat the fish with the sauce: complete fellatio.
Pimp, lover of a public girl, who lives at the expense of a woman, a whore, who is maintained by a woman.
See as well Fish (slang synonyms).
No flesh, no fish : Undefinable, indeterminate (for something) - Undecided or difficult to define (for someone).
There was a very long time ago when the Lent fast was scrupulously observed: only one meal of bread, vegetables, dried fruits and water a day. Then, some pundits of the Church allowed a certain relaxation which saw the introduction of fish, eggs, dairy products and even wine. Fish was a huge subject of discussion, some saying that fish was flesh ( it's an animal, right?), the others saying it was not (at a time when animal studies were not very extensive, they believed that these critters only fed on water). The people retained only the picturesque side of these not very pleasant exchanges and coined our expression to designate things whose nature is not well defined, people whose opinion fluctuates, those who have a suspicious behavior, indefinable and, more generally, all things indeterminate. Nowadays, it is also used regularly in connection with politicians whose opinion varies according to the direction of the wind or the result of the last polls.
This expression has existed at least since the XNUMXth century. Fishermen used it to describe the maneuver which consists, once the fish has been hooked, of making it alternately get out and re-enter the water so as to exhaust it so that it no longer puts up any resistance.
It is in this way of proceeding with the adversary that our expression took on its figurative meaning, around 1930. To flood the interlocutor with words is also to stun him, to tire him, to make him cease all verbal resistance and, sometimes, even going so far as to fill it with confusion and prevent it from returning to the main subject from which one wished to divert it; which explains the two meanings of the expression.
But we had previously healthy as a fish in water and Rey and Chantreau even note, in the thirteenth century, a I'm not so comfortable like the fish that nods (swimming).
The expression "(To) yell like rotten fish" : To verbally attack (someone) in a very violent way.
At first glance, there are two ways of understanding this expression, which dates from the beginning of the XNUMXth century:
– either it is a question of “yelling like rotten fish (may yell at someone)”, which seems rather unlikely, because a rotten fish is no longer really in a condition to yell at anyone;
– either it is a question of "bashing like (someone can bawl) rotten fish", and there it will be necessary to explain to me the usefulness of the act and the effect that a yelling at a fish can have in this state.
In both cases, therefore, the expression seems extremely bizarre.
But Alain Rey explains it by a probable deformation of the fact of treating someone of rotten fish, an insult which could have been born in the middle of the herringers or traditionally loud-mouthed fishmongers.
Alain Rey indicates that this expression dates from the end of the XNUMXth century, based on a joke with the word fish which, since the XNUMXth century, designated a pimp, also called a mackerel which happens to be a real fish whose best fishing period is around April.
The most widespread of the explanations, which are legion, says that King Charles IX, in 1564, decided that New Year's Eve would henceforth be on January 1st instead of April 1st, but no text seems to report that there was somewhere in the kingdom a place where the first day of the year was April 1st. Pope Gregory XIII then reformed the Julian calendar and extended Charles IX's measurement to all of Christendom.
Quotation from the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, known as Céline (1894-1961): “How? How ? You old cod! You come up here to agonize me! Ah! Old poo! old hickey! old chlingue! ... Get out of here or I'll turn you around! I'm not going to cause you me in your gogs! Fish ! Down the drain! " In the novel Guignol's band. (1952)