{"id":11249,"date":"2015-05-22T11:36:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T10:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=11249"},"modified":"2015-05-22T11:36:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T10:36:13","slug":"take-the-frog-and-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=11249","title":{"rendered":"Take the frog and run!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/tirelire.jpg\" width=\"208\" height=\"208\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 20px 50px;\" alt=\"Tirelire grenouille\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I came across the interesting French word <strong>grenouiller<\/strong>, which literally means &#8220;to frog&#8221; and actually means &#8220;to indulge in shady dealings&#8221;, and seems to refer specifically to political intrigues, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.le-dictionnaire.com\/definition.php?mot=grenouiller\">Le Dictionnaire<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>A related expression is <em>manger \/ bouffer la grenouille<\/em> (literally, &#8220;to eat the frog&#8221;) = to scoop the till; to clean out the till; to take the money and run<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.expressio.fr\/expressions\/manger-bouffer-la-grenouille.php\">Expressio.fr<\/a> until the 18th century French piggy banks (<em>les cochon tirelires \/ les tirelires cochon<\/em>) were usually in the shape of frogs (<em>grenouilles<\/em>), rather than pigs (<em>cochons<\/em>), and the word <em>grenouille<\/em> came to be associated with money that had been set aside by a group or association. So <em>manager la grenouille<\/em> came to mean taking that money.<\/p>\n<p>An alternative explanation from the same source is that <em>manger<\/em> is a synonym for <em>croquer<\/em>, which means to crunch or munch, and also means to squander an inheritance or sum of money. The <em>grenouille<\/em> in this expression comes from the slang term <em>grenouiller<\/em>, which was used until the 19th century, meaning to carouse in taverns, and to spend ill-gotten gains. <\/p>\n<p>Is <em>grenouiller<\/em> still used? If not, are there alternative expressions meaning the same thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I came across the interesting French word grenouiller, which literally means &#8220;to frog&#8221; and actually means &#8220;to indulge in shady dealings&#8221;, and seems to refer specifically to political intrigues, according to Le Dictionnaire. A related expression is manger \/ bouffer la grenouille (literally, &#8220;to eat the frog&#8221;) = to scoop the till; to clean [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,111,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-french","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}