to discuss an essentially private matter, especially a dispute or scandal, in public—UK, 1819—loan translation from French ‘laver son linge sale en public’, originated by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1814
an impressive facade or show designed to hide an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition—1843—from the sham villages said to have been built by Grigori Potemkin to deceive Catherine II
in French contexts: a young person, especially a young man, belonging to a youth subculture of the 1950s and 1960s—UK, 1959—from the noun ‘blouson’ (a short jacket) and the adjective ‘noir’ (black)
a difficult, uncooperative or unsociable person—UK, 1829—from French ‘mauvais coucheur’, literally ‘bad bedfellow’, with original allusion to a person whom a traveller had to share a bed with when stopping over at an inn
to set someone thinking very hard or seriously, to give someone much food for thought—UK, 1889—loan translation from French ‘donner furieusement à penser’
the political, military or economical threat regarded as being posed by certain peoples of South-East and East Asia, especially the Chinese and the Japanese—UK, 1895—loan translation from French ‘péril jaune’
soldiers regarded simply as material to be expended in war—‘cannon fodder’ (1847), said to have been coined after German ‘Kanonenfutter’—French ‘chair à canon’ (1814), first used in reference to Napoléon Bonaparte
also ‘no joy without annoy’—meaning: there is a trace of trouble or difficulty in every pleasure—was already a common proverb in the late sixteenth century
Australia, 1927—alteration of ‘blanc’ in French ‘vin blanc’ (‘white wine’)—via rhyming slang forms such as ‘plinketty-plonk’, from phrases such as ‘vin blank’ in the slang of soldiers stationed in France during WWI