Hello, dear friends! Thank you for joining me for this new episode of the Authentic French podcast. And today, we are going to study together a new expression, a French idiomatic expression which is "jeter aux lions" or we can make the liaison "jeter_aux lions", jette aux lions or jeter_aux lions, the liaison here is not obligatory.
Before that, I would like to remind you that, as usual, you can download your free PDF file by going to the episode description. You will find there, quite simply, everything that is explained in today's episode, both in terms of the meaning of the words and the meaning of the expression and even the examples.
Here we go. "Throw to the lions", what could that possibly mean?
The verb "to throw" means, to throw something with your hands. So if I have, I don't know, here, there's my phone, I take my phone and I'm angry, I throw it. That means I take it in my hand and I make a forward movement and I let go. You can throw with more or less force. There are sports that consist of throwing things: javelin, shot put. So you take an object and the idea is to send it far. That's throwing.
The "lion" is an animal, it is a large mammal of the feline family like cats. The lion, we also say that it is the king of animals, it is a carnivorous animal and the male is characterized by a beautiful mane that he has around his head. He is the symbol of strength and courage, the lion.
So, the origin of this expression would vietnam whatsapp number datacome from the history of ancient Rome where it was a question of the great fire and the beginning of the persecutions of Christians. So those who refused to venerate the Roman gods, they were sent, they were thrown into the lions' den. Another possible origin, still in ancient Rome, would come from the games of the circus precisely at this Roman time where the condemned were locked up with lions. But we see that whatever the veracity of these origins, we are dealing with ancient Rome and a period during which people, humans were put with the lions.
And fortunately, today, we don't do that anymore. And when we throw someone to the lions, it's not a person that we're going to expose to lions, to physical injuries or to physical risk, but we're exposing a person to criticism that is strong. So when we say that we throw someone to the lions, well we're exposing them to strong criticism or strong criticism, we're putting a person in a difficult position, a stressful position, a position, really, in which the person is under pressure. That's throwing to the lions.