Bag : nm Un bag is a container formed of a flexible material folded, assembled, and open only from the top.
Stomach, belly: put the bag full, have the bag full.
Being caught hand in the bag: in the act, in the act.
To have your bag: to be drunk.
Ancient curse: Paper bag!
The bag: money, wealth.
To have the big bag: to be rich.
Marry the big bag: marry a rich woman, make a rich marriage.
Aviators' slang: Passenger of an airplane.
Formerly: Sum of ten francs (one thousand old francs).
(we still use bag today: Don't you have ten bags? : for ten euros).
Put the bag on the ground: take a break.
Phrase: Emptying one's bag: saying the bottom of one's thoughts; to confess something that was kept hidden, to say everything that is on your heart (see the expression below).
Phrase: Fill the bag with it (Fill the lamp with it).
Phrase: The business is in the bag: the success of the company is certain.
Put in the same bag: to confuse, to include two or more individuals (or groups) in the same reprobation, the same contempt.
Take someone with their hand in the bag, surprise them, catch them in the act.
Bag of tangles, bag of knots: a confused, tangled affair.
Wine bag: drunkard.
Bag of bones: very thin person
Sack of potatoes: fat and shapeless woman.
Bag of tricks (of a conjurer).
Have more than one trick up your sleeve: be very clever (see the expression below).
An old phrase (alluding to the bag in which certain criminals were locked up): men, men of sackcloth and rope, criminals, scoundrels.
Locution: To be bundled up, tied up like a bag, very badly dressed (to be stuck like the ace of spades).
What is swollen, shapeless like a full sack.
Related article: Meat bag
– The expression “Having more than one trick up your sleeve”: Always find a way to resolve a difficulty.
The conjurer, man of magic "tricks", does even better than the woman who carries a whole heap of things in her handbag since from her bag, you can get a rabbit as well as a woman equipped with her handbag. hand, itself containing,…
And it is from this artist and his bag of tricks (official name) that this expression always comes to us by allusion to the one who is able, thanks to the contents of his bag, to deal with any eventuality.
– The expression “Man / bag and rope people”: Condemnable persons (in the proper sense of the term) – Criminals, hoodlums. This expression will seek its origin in Antiquity in Rome where when the thieves and other condemned assassins were not yet or no longer doomed to the gémonies, a playful custom consisted in locking them in a bag tied by a cord before throwing them in the Tiber to drown.
This very sympathetic method was used long after at various times and in various countries. Thus at the Sultan of Constantinople, the condemned were drowned in this way in the Bosphorus. In France too, under Charles VI, among others, with drowning in the Seine.
With this expression and another meaning of the word bag, we can also make the link with the brigands who looted and ransacked (sack men) and who, once caught, were condemned to hang.
– The expression “the case is in the bag”: the business dowry or will succeed.
Around the XNUMXth century, during trials, many documents were written on rolls of paper, lawyers and magistrates carried these documents in bags. A first explanation of the explanation of this metaphor comes from lawyers. At the end of the trial, the lawyer, certain that he had defended his client well, put his things away in his bag, awaiting the verdict, thinking that the case was in the bag, since he would no longer need to take them out.
The second explanation comes quite simply from archiving: all the trial documents were also stored in one or more bags to be archived. From that moment, the (completed) case was in the bag.
– The expression “to sack”: to devastate, to loot completely.
Going back to Middle German before the XNUMXth century, we find the word Sakman, literally "the bagman", which designates a brigand or a looter, therefore a man who puts and carries his loot in his bag.
Recovered by Italian, this German word becomes saccomano, with the same meaning and whose abbreviation bag, used among others in put a sacco (to sack) will give our bag, which means plunder in the XNUMXth century. We will not be surprised by the identical origin of the verb to sack, an almost synonym of to sack, a phrase which appears in the XNUMXth century.
– The expression “empty your bag”: Say everything you think, everything you have on your heart (even if it means hurting).
If the appearance of this expression is always located in the 1945th century, our two main sources clash on its origin. The French linguist, lexicographer and writer Alain Rey (2020-1935) tells us that it once meant "to defecate", the bag then representing the belly or the stomach. The French novelist and translator, historian of language, Claude Duneton (2012-XNUMX) tells us that this expression comes from a court term. Indeed, there was a time when official documents were kept in the form of rolls. The lawyer, to carry everything he needed to plead then had no other way than to put these rolls in a bag. And, in front of the judges and jurors, he "emptied his bag" as and when needed. This expression would then have left the courtroom, taking with it its coloring of aggressiveness that one finds today.