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(Warning: This question contains somewhat sexually explicit material).

The following passage confuses me a lot:

Je lui ai tenu fermement les hanches en prenant mon pied et lui aussi. Il n'est habituellement pas très fan de cette position, mais là il prenait vraiment son pied.

1) Understanding "tenir" with both an indirect object and a direct object.

"Je lui ai tenu fermement les hanches".

I go to wordreference's page for "tenir". To understand what it means to "tenir" "les hanches", I look at all the entries that are marked "vtr" (transitive verbs), which, if you mouse over the "vtr" symbol, wordreference indicates that a "vtr" takes a direct object. I conclude that to "tenir" the hips is to grab hold or take hold the hips.

Then, to understand "lui", I look at all the entries that have "à qqn". I conclude that it could mean "to [physically] cling or stick onto someone", or "to mean a lot to someone". Given that this passage is a physical description of what's happening during sex, I'm guessing that it's the first.

So, so far I have "I held firmly to his hips and clung onto him". So far, so good. But then I question whether this is a correct translation, as I translate the rest of the sentence:

2)

.. en prenant mon pied et lui aussi.

".. while holding my foot and him too".

How does a person both hold firmly onto someone's hips, while also holding onto your own foot [?!] ? And why does the narrator even mention "en prenant [..] lui" in addition to saying "je lui ai tenu" -- isn't this redundant, given they pretty much mean the same thing ("while holding onto him" and "I clung onto him")?

3) Strangely, the next sentence also mentions holding onto a foot:

.. il prenait vraiment son pied.

"he was really holding onto his foot".

At this point I'm suspecting that "prendre son pied" is an expression, but neither linguee.fr nor wordreference seems to confirm this.

Questions:
1. Is my guess of how to translate "Je lui ai tenu fermement les hanches" correct? Is my understanding correct that, when I look in a dictionary, that I need to look for entries in a dictionary that say "transitive verb" to understand the direct object, and to look at entries with "à [qqch/qqn]" to understand the indirect object?
2. Is it true that "Je lui ai tenu" and ".. en prenant [..] lui aussi" is redundant?
3. What does "prendre son pied" mean? Is there a way I could have looked this up, myself?

silph
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1 Answers1

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(1) Je lui ai tenu fermement les hanches

Your strategy for understanding tenir is a good start, but you shouldn't combine two definitions where one takes a direct object and the other an indirect object. Instead, if the verb can take both at once, you'll find an entry that shows both.

For example, here's a WordReference subheading for donner that accounts for each object in this complex-looking set simultaneously:

donner envie à qqn de faire qch

So why does your tenir have both a direct and an indirect object if there's no subheading tenir [qqch] à [qqn] ? Answer: lui identifies the owner of the hanches. This would be hard to interpret until you know this pattern: Body parts can be connected to their owner by an indirect object.

This might sound somewhat absurd, but you'll recognize it from familiar phrases like these:

Je me lave les mains.

Tu te brosses les dents.

Anglophones are tempted to say « Je lave mes mains » and « Tu brosses tes dents ».

So the phrase you quoted is like « J'ai tenu fermement ses hanches » (if you could say that).

Generally, French conceptualizes body parts oddly. It seems to avoid possessive + body part as often as possible. For example, one doesn't say « Ma tête tourne » but « J'ai la tête qui tourne ».

(2–3) il prenait vraiment son pied

You were right to suspect that this odd-sounding position is due to its being an idiom. I'm not sure why your search on WordReference failed to turn one up. Here's the entry:

have a blast, have a great time, have a ball

I switched the language to French-English and watched for new suggestions as I typed each letter.

prendre son pied

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Luke Sawczak
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  • so, "en prenant mon pied et toi aussi" is actually mixing two meanings of "prendre", in a kind of word-play? that is, it is saying "while I was having a ball, and while holding onto him"? – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:28
  • oh, and I realized now that I had typed "prendre un pied" instead of "prendre son pied" ; that's why nothing was showing up in WR for me – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:30
  • also: for "se" verbs, such as "se laver", is the "se" (when converted to me/te/se) sometimes an indirect object (as it is in your examples about brushing your teeth or washing your hands -- ie, the owner of the hands and teeth are connected through an indirect object), and sometimes it is a direct object? – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:32
  • I don't think there's any wordplay — just that both are having a blast. And yup — those objects cross several categories, as can be seen in this chart. You can tell which one it is by checking the entry as you did or watching for agreement in the sentence (e.g. « elle s'est lavé les mains » → if se were direct there, lavé would have to agree and be lavée, per this flow chart.). – Luke Sawczak Apr 09 '18 at 01:36
  • oh. I read ".. en prenant mon pied et lui aussi." as "en prenant mon pied, et en prenant lui aussi". Is this a grammatically correct reading, and if so, is it "magical context understanding" that lets you know that this is not the correct reading? – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:37
  • just to be clear about "se" verbs: sometimes when they are taught, they are taught as if we are NOT supposed to think of the se/me/te/etc as direct object pronouns nor indirect object pronouns. but, is it true that in reality, the se/me/te etc of "se verbs" are ALWAYS actually either a direct object or an indirect object? – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:40
  • Ahh, now I understand the ambiguity. Hmm, your reading is also grammatically correct. I can't strictly rule it out. Maybe a native speaker can. For se etc.: indeed, grammatically they have the status of one of the columns in that chart, even though it often makes no sense to translate them to the grammatically equivalent structure in English. – Luke Sawczak Apr 09 '18 at 01:42
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    excellent, thanks Luke. i'll allow some time for others to chime in [maybe they might give a native speaker perspective on "en prenant mon pied et lui aussi", but your answer now clarifies everything else. – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:44
  • actually -- i just realized that you said that if a verb could take a direct object and an indirect object, then the dictionary will show that in an entry. but didn't you point out yesterday that some verbs might take a "de + noun" or "à + noun", but not have a corresponding entry, and thus you have to use the common meanings of "de" and "à"? thus, is it possible that i might see a sentence where a verb takes both a direct and indirect object (and it isn't using an indirect object to connect a body part to its owner), but that i will have to choose a one- [or 0] object entry frm the dctionary? – silph Apr 09 '18 at 01:52
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    @silph Yup, so long as you don't combine two separate entries. That is, if tenir de and tenir à are both collocations with their own entry, those two specialized meanings can't both be in effect at once — but each could be paired with any number of generic prepositions. – Luke Sawczak Apr 09 '18 at 01:54
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    Prendre son pied peut aussi vouloir dire « to orgasm » – D. Ben Knoble Apr 09 '18 at 12:39