What does the idiomatic French expression tomber dans les pommes mean? Click the link above to learn all about it, and then come back here to share your thoughts.
More: French expressions | Food in French
More: French expressions | Food in French
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“Tober dans les pommes” Perhaps the connection is from the love of cider and calvados (apple brandy) particularly popular in Normandy and the inevitable effects of over indulgence!
Maybe it has to do with Newton’s theory of gravity. It supposedly came to him when he watched an apple fall from a tree.
Or quite possibly it came into existence after someone fell from the apple tree with his basket of said fruit, thereby “tomber dans les pommes”.
I’ve always heard that this expression evolved from the idea of falling with your palms out, or your “paumes” in French. Paumes sounds much like pommes and the expression was thus born.
Europe is a land of agriculuture. It’s quite fitting to imagine some French author in the country side sitting beneath a budding tree of fruit. She fainted–elle est tombee dans les pommes. It’s not so hard to imagine why this phrase references apples.
I had the same idea John. This expression reminds me of a favorite English expression “drunk as a boar in an apple orchard”. It derrives from the fact that the apples on the ground start to ferment and could possibly get a pig drunk if it ate too much.
In Australia there is a saying “She’ll be apples” which means everything will be okay. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with this discussion except for the apples; thought I would have twopenneth worth!
Maybe the association with pommes and faiting comes from the fairy tale Blanche-Neige, which was first recounted by the famous french author Perrault.
A distinct possibility for this expression (and “rester dans les pommes”) is that apples used to be stored in large barrels. As the pile was eaten, one had to dig deep into the barrel and, it was possible to bend over so much that one would lose their balance, with more body weight over the barrel edge than out of it. So, you literally fell in the apples. (Recall, too, how, in the book Treasure Island, young Jim Hawkins overheard some evil plans when he had climbed completely into the ship’s apple barrel to get the apples at the bottom.)
In the back of my brain there’s a memory of a similarly sourced expression in English but I just can’t remember it.
From french class, they told us it had to do with making cider and calvados where at times when they were treading on the apples, they would faint from the fumes.
Also worth considering that it rhymes or almost does. If an expression needed somewhere to fall into it would be more appropriate to choose something that rhymed since its more emphatic. dans les oranges may have been used elsewhere but didn’t catch on so well!
I was immediately reminded of apple cellars,where people used to, and maybe still do, store their apples for the winter in wooden racks with slats. So, if you faint, you fall all the way down, and that’s where a cellar is.
I like this expression. It makes you laugh when you read the literal translation. Imagine someone passing out and falling into a pile of apples. It’s funny! I love learning all kinds of French idiomatic expressions. The literal translations of them are funny to me. God bless and Bless God. Don’t “tomber dans les pommes!”
I always thought “pommes” was a corruption of “Paumé” meaning “lost” so that when you fainted you were temporarily lost.
Un complément d’explication sur la théorie des “pommes cuites”: http://www.mon-expression.info/tomber-dans-les-pommes
The combination apple and fainting also occurs in german and dutch. Here it means a very light or even faked fainting. I don’t know the origin in these languages, but suspect they have the same root.
A 1913 dutch dictionary suggests, it is “a light faint that can be easily helped with eating a sour apple”.
look, dan les pommes, refers to cows who have eaten ground apples, the apples ferment and they arrive drunk, hence their behavior is like a young person who falls head over heels about another
Comrades, ..
I might hazard a guess on the origin of this phrase and go a bit deeper into the mythological. Did you ever notice that Snow White falls prey to a poisoned apple? Or even before this old tale … in the garden of Eden the bite from the apple of knowledge casts Adam and Eve from the Garden (paradise) … a fall from grace?
Hmm… comments? criticisms? suggestions?
your thoughts svp
In “La Puce a l’Oreille”, the expression is said to be a modernisation of ‘tomber dans les paumes’ which is what the soldiers during the Hundred Years War did when they were attacked. They literally fell into each other’s hands in defeat, but were injured or dead rather than simply fainting..
Why falling into the apples, tomber dans les pommes?
One guess would be apple picking: that ladder were used to reach the
apples in the tree and the apples were placed in a nearby wagon. If one lost his or her balance, she would fall into the apples.
A Vanina:
L’explication du dico Robert e me convainc pas du tout.
G.Sand parle de pommes cuites,ce que l’expression ne comporte pas.Elle ne dit pas qu’elle tombe dedans.Après s’être masculinisée elle aimait jouer à la bonne gestionnaire et ménagère dans son domaine de Nohant et elle écrivait à ses amis qu’elle faisait des conserves de légumes et de fruits,ce quilui laissait peu de temps pour leur écrire.C’est tout !
En faveur du verbe “se pâmer”(accent circonflexe!)il y a que cela se disait aussi “tomber en pamoison”,pour s’évanouir subitement,ou faire semblant par jeu.Que cela ressemble à un jeu de mots,c’est bien possible,voire probable,la moquerie aime à en faire.
When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the Law of Gravity with the falling apple, he also pointed out that the apples fall from the tree at the end of their lives on the tree ! This situation has been simulated and extrapolated to the situation of ‘fainting or passing away’, hence the connotation to the apples falling down !
Un linguiste Albert Dauzat,avait édité de nombreux livres sur le langue
C’est à lui qu’on doit cette explication à partir du verbe se pâmer,du latin spasmus,qui est un cheminement linguistique très normal.
Le français,supprimant le premier s auinsi que le S intérieurn en remplaçant celui-ci par,comme souvent,un accent circonflexe ^donnant un son grave au a.D’où différence entre papa et pâ,qui s’approche de la prononciation pô.
Noter que l’expression se pâmer (de colère,d’admiration,d’amour etc..)fur en usage au Moyen-Âge,dans les milieus aristicratiques,(à l’usage des dames,bien sûr) – Se décline en “tomber en pâmoison” ou tomber en évanouissement.(tomber indiquant la soudaineté). – Alors que “tomber dans les pommes est populaire,voire populacier.
La verve populaire sait bien jouer avec les mots.Les gens du peuple se divertissaient à transformer gaiement “tomber en pâmoison” en ” tomber dans les pommes.Quand on voit comme les mots évoluent,c’est réaliste
i think because certain alcoholics are extracted from apple , these beverages in much amounts cause unconciousness