real men don't eat quiche
- idiom
- Offensive
:
los hombres de verdad no comen quiche
- She rolled her eyes after hearing her uncle repeat 'real men don't eat quiche' during the family brunch.
Examples
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At the party, someone laughed and quoted 'real men don't eat quiche' when he chose the vegetarian option.
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The book humorously explores the notion that 'real men don't eat quiche'.
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He joked that real men don't eat quiche.
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Why do people say real men don't eat quiche?
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At the dinner table, he humorously declared, 'real men don't eat quiche' to emphasize his preference for meat over the vegetarian dish.
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During the barbecue, someone quipped, 'real men don't eat quiche', prompting laughter among the guests as they discussed traditional masculinity.
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In her article, the author jokingly stated that 'real men don't eat quiche', challenging outdated stereotypes about what constitutes manliness.
Synonyms
1
8.6
Supporting traditional male roles and traits, often excluding others
Surface Forms
Morphology
real + man + don't + eat + quiche
The literal propositional content — that 'genuine men' do not eat quiche — is directly inferable from the known words, so a learner can grasp the surface claim. However, the phrase functions as a culturally loaded, humorous/ironic cliché about stereotypical masculinity (often used mockingly), and that pragmatic nuance is not fully predictable from the constituents alone.
Etymology
Real men don't eat quiche began as a joke in a short 1982 book that made fun of old, strict ideas about being a man. The joke shows real men refusing quiche because it was seen as 'not manly', so people now use the line to mock or point out traditional views of 'being a man'.