{"id":9380,"date":"2013-11-30T10:54:28","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T10:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=9380"},"modified":"2013-11-30T10:54:28","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T10:54:28","slug":"as-flat-as","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=9380","title":{"rendered":"As flat as &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week in the French conversation group one of the things that came up was the expression &#8220;as flat as a pancake&#8221; or the slightly ruder version, &#8220;as flat as a witch&#8217;s tit&#8221;. This was being used to describe the flatness of beer. The only equivalent we could find in French was &#8220;completement plat&#8221; (completely flat), though I&#8217;ve since found a couple of others: &#8220;plat comme une limande&#8221; (&#8216;flat like a dab*&#8217;) [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linternaute.com\/dictionnaire\/fr\/definition\/plat-comme-une-limande\/\">source<\/a>], and &#8220;plat comme une lamelle&#8221; (&#8216;flat like a sliver\/thin slice&#8217;) [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.almaany.com\/en\/dict\/en-fr\/plat\/?page=10\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Other variations of the English phrases I&#8217;ve found include &#8220;as flat as a board&#8221;, &#8220;as flat as an ironing board&#8221; and &#8220;as flat as a trencher&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>What other flat things might appear in this expression? <\/p>\n<p>Are there interesting equivalents of this phrase in other languages?<\/p>\n<p>*Dab = a species of small flat-fish, <em>Pleuronectes limanda<\/em>, similar to a flounder [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/46755?rskey=SPhSOM&#038;result=3&#038;isAdvanced=false#eid\">source<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week in the French conversation group one of the things that came up was the expression &#8220;as flat as a pancake&#8221; or the slightly ruder version, &#8220;as flat as a witch&#8217;s tit&#8221;. This was being used to describe the flatness of beer. The only equivalent we could find in French was &#8220;completement plat&#8221; (completely [&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-9380","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\/9380","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=9380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}