A French idiom that means “to sleep in” or “lie around lazily in bed after waking” is faire la grasse matinée, literally to “make the fat morning.” If you fall in love easily, you’re said to have un coeur d’artichaut, or “an artichoke heart.” That metaphor stems from the longer saying un coeur d’artichaut, une feuille pour tout le monde, meaning “an artichoke heart, a leaf for everyone.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Have a Fat Morning”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
So you work hard all week, getting up early every day, and then Saturday morning, you decide to sleep in.
There’s a great expression for this in French.
It’s faire la glasse matinée, which basically means to make or do the fat morning.
Isn’t that lovely?
The fat morning.
The lazy morning.
I love it.
Yeah.
Faire la grasse matinée en le weekend.
Le weekend.
Le weekend.
Faire la grasse matinée sur le weekend en le smoking.
You mean in le smoking?
You mean you’re wearing your dinner jacket to bed?
Or maybe you were up all night?
Yeah.
There we go.
There’s a reason you’re having a fat morning on a Saturday, right?
You had a fat Friday night.
Yeah, I really like that French idiom, and I came across another one that I thought was pretty wonderful, too.
I’ve already used it several times in different contexts.
If somebody falls in love too easily, in French, they’re said to have an artichoke heart.
An artichoke heart?
Mm—
Avoir.
Wow.
D’artichoke.
Wow, that’s amazing.
It’s a shorter version of a saying that goes, to have an artichoke heart, one leaf for everybody.
Right, because you peel them down and you’re like, oh, this isn’t the edible layer.
And by the time you get done with an artichoke, there are no edible layers.
Yeah, yeah.
And I should point out that what I’m talking about in terms of me having an artichoke heart,
It’s like falling for a book or a podcast or something like that.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I’m spoken for.
Just look at my podcast app with all these lovely podcasts I have subscribed to but not listened to.
This show’s about language, no matter what language you speak and no matter where you are.
Call us toll-free in the United States and Canada, 1-877-929-9673.
And if you’re somewhere else or you want to do something other than the telephone millennials,
You can find more ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.
