le Schmilblick - French Expression

faire avancer le Schmilblick – to disentangle a situation – French expression – Mot du Jour

faire avancer le Schmilblick - to make to move forward the Schmilblick. Please note the capital S, as Schmilblick is a patented noun. The word was created by 50s humorist Pierre Dac.

According to him, le Schmilblick was an imaginary object, useless, and therefore, could also be used for anything and everything. People came to like that goofy concept and the word is now used extensively. In the 70s, Coluche, another acclaimed French humorist, writes a big comedy hit where one of his characters, « Papy Mougeot » keeps on answering questions by « I don’t know how to answer the question, I’m just here to faire avancer le Schmilblick - to make things move forward ».

So, what’s this French expression really, faire avancer le Schmilblick? I would translate it as ‘to keep things moving’, ‘to disentangle a situation’, ‘to make things move forward’.

I wish more humorists’ ideas made it into our world.

« Je vois bien que vous n’arrivez pas à vous en sortir, mais il va quand même falloir faire avancer le Schmilblick car j’ai besoin de la voiture demain. »
- ‘I can see you can’t really manage the situation, but we’ll still have to disentangle the situation because I need the car tomorrow.’