Debout
*Mieux vaut goujat debout qu’empereur enterré = “A living dog is better than a dead lion.”—Ecclesiastes ix. 4.
[La Fontaine, La Matrone d’Éphèse. Goujat first meant a soldier’s servant (as here), now it means a hodman, or bricklayer’s apprentice, hence a vulgar, coarse fellow, a bungler.]
Cela ne tient pas debout = That won’t hold water.
Débrider
Il a écrit vingt pages sans débrider = He has written twenty pages at a stretch.
Déchausser
Il ne faut pas se déchausser pour manger cela = It is not worth while sitting down to eat that.
[The ancients were in the habit of reclining bare-foot at their meals.]