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Get ready to learn all the things you want to know about the funny French idiom “J’ai d’autres chats à fouetter”.
This include a full definition of what it mean and how you can use it in a normal conversation with an audio example. Along with the useful stuff we sprinkled like literal meaning, dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio and more!
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Slow pronunciation
Normal pronunciation
It literally means:
In the 17th century, when people wanted to show that something was not serious or unimportant, they said “Il n’y a pas de quoi fouetter un chat” (That’s not a reason to whip a cat).
And with time, it inspired the expression: “Avoir d’autres chats à fouetter” which means “To have more important things to do / To have bigger concerns“.
Whenever you are asked to do something you don’t care about or have more important things to do, you can use: “J’ai d’autres chats à fouetter” (I have other cats to whip)
You might wonder why these poor little cats had been condemned to be whipped for such a long time?
Well, the truth is, the metaphor of the cat in all these expressions remains inexplicable. The English version: “To have other fish to fry” is already a bit more logical, since the fate of many fish is to be fried.
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