{"id":9348,"date":"2013-11-14T17:08:08","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T17:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=9348"},"modified":"2013-11-14T17:08:08","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T17:08:08","slug":"taking-the-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=9348","title":{"rendered":"Taking the fly"},"content":{"rendered":"

I discovered an interesting French idiom today – prendre la mouche<\/strong> – which means literally ‘to take the fly’ and is the equivalent of ‘to go off in a huff’. Huff refers to ‘a passing mood of anger or pique’ A French equivalent of ‘to be in a huff’ is \u00eatre vex\u00e9<\/em>. Are there similar expressions in other languages?<\/p>\n

La mouche<\/em> means fly, button or patch comes from the Latin m\u016dsca<\/em> (fly)<\/p>\n

Here are some other expressions featuring this word:<\/p>\n

– bateau-mouche = pleasure boat (on the Seine)
\n– fine mouche = sharp customer
\n– oiseau-mouche = hummingbird (‘fly bird’)
\n– pattes de mouche = spidery scrawl (‘fly paws’)
\n– poids mouche = flyweight
\n– papier tue-mouche = flypaper
\n– mouche du coche = back-seat driver (‘coach fly’)
\n– mouche \u00e0 miel = honey bee (‘honey fly’)
\n– faire mouche = bull’s-eye<\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/dictionary.reverso.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I discovered an interesting French idiom today – prendre la mouche – which means literally ‘to take the fly’ and is the equivalent of ‘to go off in a huff’. Huff refers to ‘a passing mood of anger or pique’ A French equivalent of ‘to be in a huff’ is \u00eatre vex\u00e9. Are there similar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9348","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=9348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}