LEARN FRENCH IN 2 MINUTES - French idiom: Avoir un poil dans la main

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LEARN FRENCH IN 2 MINUTES - French idiom: Avoir un poil dans la main

Transcript

Hi everyone, hope you're doing well. Welcome to this video where we're going to see a French expression in a few minutes.

I hope you are comfortable. Don't forget that you can activate French or English subtitles if you need them.

Today, we're going to see a funny expression. It is funny for someone who does not speak French, whose language is not French.

This expression is to have a hair in the hand. A hair is what you have on your arms, on your legs. We have a hair here in the hand. This expression, it simply means that we are lazy. We are really, really, really lazy.

We are lazy for a girl. We are a little soft, we are not very ambitious. In English, we say "to be work shy".

It's a bit like being shy about work, you don't like it too much. This expression is quite old, it dates from the 19th century, so it was used to talk about people who were lazy, who didn't like to work too much.

In those days, there was a lot of manual labor. So little use was made of one's hands to work that a hair can grow in it.

In reality, I don't think it's really possible for hair to grow in the palm of your hand or for a hair to grow in the palm of your hand.

Here are two scenarios to help you better understand this expression. Cynthia really has a hair in her hand. She stays in her room all day playing video games and only goes out to eat the meals her mother makes. She's really lazy.

Here is another context. Peter, my colleague, really has a hair in his hand. He never does more than what is asked of him. He always does the minimum and never offers any additional ideas. He is really lazy.

That's it for this little video. I hope you liked it. Don't hesitate to tell me in comments if there is an expression in your language to talk about really lazy people who don't like to work very much.

If you liked this video, put a like and above all, subscribe if you haven't done so yet. See you soon.

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