Everyone needs this French expression from time to time, especially when sleep deprived.
Why do I need to know faire la grasse matinée?
This expression can help you explain how you spent your morning, though maybe not to your boss…
What does it mean?
Faire la grasse matinée, roughly pronounced fair lah grass mah-tee-nay (listen here), literally translates to ‘do the fat/ greasy morning’.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t have anything to do with a full English breakfast, but rather it means ‘to sleep in’ or ‘to have a lie-in’, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re from.
Note that faire la grasse matinée is often shortened to faire la grasse mat.
This expression is an old one, dating back to at least the 16th century, when dormir la grasse matinée was used.
Despite a popular misconception about the physical effects of staying in bed all morning, linguists believe that the use of the word grasse had more to do with the ‘thickness’ or ‘softness’ of deep sleep, according to Le Figaro.
That means that faire la grasse matinée is well entrenched in the French lexicon, so feel free to use it in any situation, but if you want a synonym, you could also say dormir tard (‘sleep late’).
Use it like this
On fait toujours la grasse matinée le dimanche. – We always sleep in on Sunday.
Au lieu d’aller au travail, elle a décidé de faire la grasse matinée. – Instead of going to work, she decided to have a lie-in.
