FRENCH IDIOMS: Pants and Wet Fingers

Please excuse the rather lewd-appearing post title - this post is actually an examination of English idiom "By the seat of one's pants".

Here we find yet another idiom that doesn't quite translate between French and English in the way one might expect, for there is no pantalon, and no culottes to be found in the French approximation.

...instead, we express it with a wet finger:

au doigt mouillé.

photo by ~Pawssou

The etymology behind the French idiom has actually shed some light for me on the problem of translating from one thing to the other:

They don't quite mean the same thing.

An action performed au doigt mouillé is one that is approximate; imprecise.

An action performed by the seat of one's pants is improvised; instinctive; intuitive.

The French idiom originates from the tradition of holding a moistened finger up to assess which way the wind is blowing - we can use this to tell us approximately in which direction the wind is blowing, but not precisely.

In a sense this could be seen as improvisation in the face of insufficient resources/tools, which is probably why au doigt mouillé is considered a reasonable translation of by the seat of one's pants.

all in all it is probably better to bring a more chaotic, less organised image to mind to help this one stick.  More like this:

artwork by  ~HooDooArt

A hand reaching through the water in an approximate, imprecise direction, resulting of the intuition and instinct of the person below the surface.