the ball
to open), and this dates from time immemorial: fighting has always been
fun to Frenchmen. And there is something better still in the phrase
which has become an official one, and has a proper technical meaning,
with which the orders of a naval officer when sent on a difficult or
dangerous expedition always end. "Debrouillez vous," meaning simply
"Come well out of it." There must be stuff in men who can be trusted to
always extricate themselves from a tight place with credit to their flag
without more words than that simple exhortation. But one cannot say much
for the morality of a country where, when any one says "la muette" (the
dumb one), it is understood to mean conscience.

The instances are rare of resemblance between our slang phrases and
theirs. Once in a while such a phrase as "Asseyezvous dessus"
(literally, Sit on him) strikes one; but seldom. French slang teems with
words that caricature and satirize personal defects, of which many are
brutally coarse and not quotable. A comical expression for a sumptuous
meal is a "Balthazar" (Belshazzar); and an unpleasant one for a coffin
is a "boite a dominos" (a box of dominoes); a droll phrase for a
plagiarist is "demarqueur de linge" (some one who alters the marking of
another's linen). An interesting fact for the notice of physiologists is
that when the officers of the engineer corps lose a comrade from
insanity, they say, "Il s'est passe au dixieme," in allusion to the fact
that their loss in numbers from this cause amounts to practical
decimation. This is attributed to the close study of the exact sciences.
Under "femme du demi-monde" we find the origin of the phrase as created
by A. Dumas fils: "Femme nee dans un monde distingue, dont elle conserve
les manieres sans en respecter les lois" ("a woman belonging by birth to
the upper class, the manners of which she retains, without respecting
its laws"); but the present meaning is quite different from this, the
phrase being now used as a euphuistic designation of a disreputable
woman. French slang is saturated with irreverence. A common term for an
emaciated-looking man is to call him an "ecce homo," and a "grippe
Jesus" is thieves' slang for a gendarme.

The author of this dictionary evidently sympathizes with modern
romanticists and light literature in general, for we find "academicien"
defined as "litterateur suranne." One is always inclined to suspect sour
grapes of giving the flavor to French sarcasm con