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Get ready to find out everything you want to know about the basic idiom “Il pleut des cordes”.
More precisely, this includes a detailed definition of what it is and how to use it in a dialogue with an audio example. And because we want to help you on your learning journey, we also sprinkled some useful informations like slow pronunciation audio, dialogue example, synonyms and more!
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This expression means “It’s raining a lot / heavily” and literally means: “It’s raining ropes.“
Why “ropes“? Because of the visual effect of drops of water falling very close to each other, looking like ropes falling from the sky.
Instead of saying “Il pleut beaucoup” (It’s raining a lot), you can use the expression “Il pleut des cordes” (It’s raining ropes) or even “Il pleut comme vache qui pisse” (It’s raining like a peeing cow) to make it funnier.
But be careful, the last isn’t appropriate for formal contexts, typically at work.