Yesterday I discovered that one way to say that you’re familiar with something in French is être au parfum, or literally “to be in the perfume of”. Anyone know why perfume is involved in this expression?
English equivalents include ‘to be in the know’, ‘to be clued up’, ‘to be on the ball’, ‘to be in the loop’ – can you think of any others?
Another way to say this in French is être au courant (‘to be in the current’).
Some related expressions in other languages.
A related expression in French is mettre au parfum (‘to put in the perfume’), which means to provide all the necessary information, to put sb in the know.
The figurative use of ‘parfum’ here in this French idiom is proabably alluding to a ‘smell of’, ‘scent of something’ that one is so familiar with, in this case ‘knowledge’?
In English we have ’cognizant of’ which is a bit dated now, or ‘au fait (with)’ which we’ve borrowed and modified from its original French meaning ‘by the way’.
In Welsh au fait is ‘gwybod am..’ eg. ‘cânt wybod yn gyson am…’ – they are au fait with…
In American English, there’s “to be hip” or “to be hip to”.
Quick look through the thesaurus gives you:
kept abreast
acquainted with
apprised
at home with
au courant
au fait
aware
cognizant
conversant
down with
in on
in the know
in the loop
informed
kept posted
mindful of
no stranger to
plugged in
savvy
tuned in
up on
up to snuff
versant
versed in
well up in
with it
All of which have overlapping shades of meaning which would probably be glossed in Welsh with ‘cael gwybod am’ but I did see in the dictionary:
‘heb fod yn rhan o’r drafodaeth bellach’ for English ‘out of the loop’ but nothing for ‘in the loop’?