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>You lie like a dentist at a fair.
This expression is used by one of the characters in the English translation of "The Age of Reason" (1945) by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Eric Sutton (1962).
It gets zero Google-hits.
Maybe it's a literal translation of a French idiom. Any ideas as to why French dentists at fairs might embody the quiddity of dishonesty?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Can you give the original words? Maybe belMarduk could help.
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Carpal Tunnel
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maybe because they all advertized themselves as "painless"?
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Good call, of troy. That's better than anything I've been able to come up with. I was thinking, maybe they'd formed some kind of conspiratorial cartel with candy floss salesmen! Part shares and part profits!
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Quote:
Can you give the original words? Maybe belMarduk could help.
You mean in French? I'm reading the English translation.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yes, I meant the French. But I got to thinking after my other post, that it may have the same sense as those charlatans who used to travel around the countryside (Edit: often with circuses or fairs) selling fake elixirs.
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I agree. The French lanugage has a very limited vocabulary compared to English.
In translating this expression, "dentist" may be a bit loose and refers to a broad category of "circus-like charlatans".
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world" -Michael Crichton
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Carpal Tunnel
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In translating this expression, "dentist" may be a bit loose and refers to a broad category of "circus-like charlatans"I'm not sure about small vocabularies, but French dentiste seems to cover most of the meaning of English dentist. Under the entry for mentir 'to lie' I did find: Mentir comme un arracheur de dents. An arracheur des dents would be a tooth-puller, and the saying seems to be a proverb of sorts. "Loc. proverbiale. [P. allus. à l'insincérité des arracheurs de dents affirmant que l'opération ne fera pas mal] Mentir comme un arracheur de dents." I did notice that English fair does not come into it. Googling around makes me think that tooth drawer may be a better translation of arracheur des dents.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quote:
Googling around makes me think that tooth drawer may be a better translation of arracheur des dents.
That'd be the dresser drawer you keep your teeth in at night?
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Carpal Tunnel
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That'd be the dresser drawer you keep your teeth in at night?
I keep 'em in a glass of fizzy water on the nightstand. But, yeah, you get the idear.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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