Learning French: four expressions featuring fil 

This month, you may hear the phrase: En avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil; en mai, fais ce qu'il te plaît. 

This springtime saying is essentially a warning that April can still surprise you with its chilly weather.

It literally translates as: in April, you should not remove any clothing layers, but in May you can do what you like. 

The word fil is pronounced somewhere between ‘fill’ and ‘feel’, and commonly means thread or cotton, so in this expression it refers figuratively to your clothes.

More fil phrases

Another ‘thread’ expression is de fil en aiguille, which literally means: from thread to needle. 

It is actually used to express something that happens bit by bit, often where we might say ‘one thing led to another’:

• Elle a commencé par apprendre à tricoter et, de fil en aiguille, elle a créé sa propre entreprise de tricots. - She began by learning to knit, then one thing leading to another and she ended up running her own knitting business.

Fil has a variety of meanings and you will hear it in other contexts. 

If someone says je te donne un coup de fil, they are not about to hand you a ball of cotton, but a quick call (un coup de fil), which tends to be used with donner (give) or passer (pass). 

Read more: Learning French: when and why do we say être habillé comme l'as de pique?

There is a logical connection here, in that fil can also mean a wire or cable, so if your phone line was down at the weekend, you might also say le fil a été coupé tout le weekend.

A metaphorical thread can also connect a series of days or years, so au fil des années elle est devenue bilingue means: over the years, she became bilingual. 

While that might seem like a lofty goal, every idiom and French quirk you learn brings you one step closer!