A interesting French idiom I came across recently is rôtir le balai, which literally means “to roast the broom/brush”. Originally it meant to live in poverty – such poverty that your are reduced to burning your broom to keep warm. Later it came to mean “to lead a miserable life, or vegetate in mediocrity” and also “to live a life of debauchery” – usually when referring to a woman [source].
The word balai [ba.lɛ] means broom, broomstick, brush, or blade (of a windscreen wiper), and also is a slang term for years (of age) [source]. Some words and phrases it appears in include:
- manche à balai = broomstick, joystick
- balai-brosse = long-handled scrubbing brush
- balai à franges = mop
- balai éponge = squeezey mop
- balai mécanique = carpet sweeper
- coup de balai = sweep, shake-up
- donner un coup de balai = to give the floor a sweep, to sweep up
- fou comme un balai = very agitated, excited and/or anxious (“as crazy as a broom”)
- du balai ! = hop it! shoo! push off!
Balai comes from the Old French balain (a bundle of broom twigs), from the Gaulish balatno (broom (shrub)) from the Proto-Celtic *banatlom (broom). Words from the same root include the Breton balan (broom), the Cornish banadhel (broom), the Welsh banadl (broom), the Spanish bálago (straw; Spanish broom (Spartium junceum) [source].
The broom shrub here is the common broom or Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), a perennial leguminous shrub native to western and central Europe, which can be used to make brooms (for sweeping) [source].
Incidentally, the Chinese character 妇 [婦] (fù), which means married woman, woman or wife, developed from pictograms of a woman and a broom. Originally the woman was on the right and the broom on the left, but at some point they switched sides source].
Do you know any other broom-related idioms?
The most obvious idiom is to “give (them) the broom”, which means to get rid of someone by “sweeping” them out of your house. The other broom-related idiom involves “sweeping” a series of sports games by winning all of them. In US baseball, this is seen a lot when a team has “swept” a 3-game series, and then someone from the team will bring out a broom to taunt the losing side. A “clean sweep” means to get rid of everything, such as firing all employees of a company or department.
I can’t think of any as colorful as your opening example, though. I think you have swept away all other examples, so to speak :-))
How about as daft as a brush? That would be another good translation of “fou comme un balai “.