Expressions pour dire que tu as très faim

What does “crever la dalle” mean in French?

“Crever la dalle” is everyday spoken French for being ravenous — far stronger than the polite “j’ai faim.” The trick is that “dalle” here is old slang for the throat, and “crever” means to burst or die, so you’re saying your gullet is starving to death. It is casual and a little dramatic, exactly what you’d say slumping into a chair before dinner among friends.

The milder cousin is “avoir la dalle” (to be hungry); swapping in “crever” cranks the intensity. “Dalle” reached French from an Old Norse word for a gutter or drainpipe, and by the 1300s it had come to mean the throat — the same hollow-channel image. So “je crève la dalle” paints an empty pipe screaming to be filled. You’ll also meet “dalle” in “que dalle” (nothing at all) and “casse-dalle” (a snack), all riffing on that same throat.