tirer le diable par la queue
Appearance
See also: tirer le diable par la queuë
French
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Attested in Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1694), p. 326, as tirer le diable par la queuë. Literally, “to pull the devil by the tail”.
Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]- to scrape by, to live from hand to mouth, to feel the pinch, to have trouble to make ends meet, not to have enough to live
See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “diable”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.