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Ready to find out everything you ever wanted to know about the funny French expression “Tomber dans les pommes”?
Including a complete definition of what it is and how you can use it in a conversation with an audio example. And because we want you to make progress in French, we also added useful informations like dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio, synonyms and more!
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Slow pronunciation
Normal pronunciation
The literal meaning is:
This French idiom means “To faint” and is very popular in France, but its origin isn’t perfectly clear…
The most common explanation comes from George Sand’s usage of a very similar expression in a 1889 letter. She said: “être dans les pommes cuites” (Literally: To be in the cooked apples), probably as a reference to another French expression: “être cuit” (Literally: To be cooked) which means “To be very tired“.
Then with time it turned into “Tomber dans les pommes” (To fall in apples) when experiencing a sudden and violent (like a fall) tiredness: a.k.a. fainting.
If you are going to faint, you can use: “Je vais tomber dans les pommes !” (Literally: I’m going to fall in apples!). Or if you are telling the story of that time when you fainted: “Je suis tombé(e) dans les pommes” (Literally: I felt into apples)
When talking about someone else:
Dialogue audio
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