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Get prepared to find out everything you want to know about the basic French idiom “Couper la poire en deux”.
To be clear, this includes a complete explanation of what it is and how you can use it in a normal conversation with an audio example. And because we want you to make progress in French, we also added useful informations like slow pronunciation audio, synonyms, dialogue example and more!
Oh and in case you are interested, you can also find more idioms pages like this one on this page plus all our French words guides on this page. Enjoy!
The literal meaning is:
This expression appeared during the 1880s and is based on the image of a pear that is cut in half equally for a fair share between two people. Why the choice of the pear is still a mystery…
Imagine: you are in the middle of a tough negotiation and both sides don’t want to give up. You can propose a compromise by saying “Faisons un compromis” (Let’s make a compromise) or “Coupons la poire en deux” (Let’s cut the pear in half)