/kase sa pip/ lit. ‘break your pipe’
French idiom, familiar. To die (said in a casual, joking way).
Draft Not yet checked by a native French speaker.
How do people use Casser sa pipe
?
Familiar and a bit jokey, the kind of thing you’d say about a distant uncle or yourself (“je ne vais pas casser ma pipe tout de suite”), never at a funeral. It’s nearly always in the passé composé: “il a cassé sa pipe”. The possessive follows the person: “ma pipe”, “leur pipe”.
Casser sa pipe
in real sentences
-
Il a cassé sa pipe.
He kicked the bucket.
Tatoeba, sentence by Blabla, translation by astyng, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does Casser sa pipe
come from?
The phrase is well attested, but its image has never been explained. French Wiktionary, citing Cosimo Campa’s book of popular expressions, says it appears in 17th-century pamphlets (the mazarinades) meaning “to fly into a rage”, and that it was in use for dying by the Napoleonic wars. A popular story says wounded soldiers bit on a clay pipe during amputations and dropped it, breaking it, if they died; that tale comes from the expressio.fr website and nobody has shown it’s true. The linguist Albert Dauzat suggested “pipe” here means a tube, perhaps the windpipe.
Mistakes learners make with Casser sa pipe
Using it in a serious or sad moment. It’s an irreverent euphemism, so telling a grieving friend that their father “a cassé sa pipe” would sound shockingly flippant; say “il est décédé” or “il nous a quittés” instead.
Other French idioms like Casser sa pipe
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?
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