/avwaʁ‿œ̃ pwal dɑ̃ la mɛ̃/ lit. ‘have a hair in your hand’
French idiom, familiar. To be very lazy and avoid work.
Draft Not yet checked by a native French speaker.
How do people use Avoir un poil dans la main
?
Familiar, teasing and very common: said about a colleague, a teenager or yourself on a Sunday. Note the liaison: “avoir_un” is said “avwar-un”. People happily exaggerate it (“il a un baobab dans la main”) for someone truly bone idle.
Avoir un poil dans la main
in real sentences
-
Celui-là, alors, il a vraiment un poil dans la main !
Look at that one there. He’s such a lazy bum!
Tatoeba, sentence by sysko, translation by FeuDRenais2, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Avoir un poil dans la main
come from?
The logic is spelled out by both Wiktionaries: palms stay hairless because hands are always working, so a hair growing in yours proves it never touches a tool. English Wiktionary quotes Blaise Cendrars using it in 1956; neither Wiktionary gives an earliest date.
Mistakes learners make with Avoir un poil dans la main
Making it plural or putting it on the wrong body part: it’s one hair (“un poil”), in the palm (“dans la main”), never “des poils sur les mains”, which just describes hairy hands.
Other French idioms like Avoir un poil dans la main
Spot a mistake in Avoir un poil dans la main
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.