à couper au couteau
Appearance
French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Compare English you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]à couper au couteau (invariable)
- (informal, figuratively, of a fog) very dense, very thick, thick as a pea soup
- un brouillard à couper au couteau ― a pea-souper
- 2010, Michel Castaigna, La Dictée miraculeuse[1], page 37:
- Deux heures du matin, se disait-il, moins dix degrés, un brouillard à couper au couteau, un quartier sans intérêt, un mot de passe débile, quelques sous-officiers et sentinelles sans la moindre motivation et cinq cents troufions qui roupillent en attendant le jus tiède du matin [...]
- Two o'clock in the morning, he thought, minus ten degrees, a pea-souper of a fog, nothing interesting in the area, a stupid password, a few NCOs and sentries who had not a shred of motivation, and five-hundred squaddies dozing off as they waited for their warm juice in the morning […]
- (informal, figuratively, of an accent) very heavy, very thick, very strong; that you could cut with a knife
- 2005, Julie Poirier, Au hasard des pistes : Les deux Amériques à vélo[2], →ISBN, page 118:
- La manière de parler des Chiliens nous réserve bien des surprises : outre un accent à couper au couteau, ils mangent les mots et ne prononcent aucun S, et ils émaillent leurs phrases de mots inconnus pour nous : huahua – le bébé –, pololo –, le petit ami –...
- The way Chileans speak still has quite a few suprises in store for us: apart from an accent you could cut with a knife, they mumble and do not pronounce their s's, and they pepper their speech with words unknown to us: huahua (baby), pololo (boyfriend)...