- Schmilblick
The Schmilblick is an imaginary object created by the French
humorist Pierre Dac during the 50s. It is absolutely useless, and can therefore be used for anything, being "rigorously entire" .Pierre Dac himself credits the brothers Jules and RaphaëlFauderche with its invention.The "Schmilblick" resurfaced in
1969 , in a TV Show byGuy Lux andJacques Antoine entitled "The Schmilblick" (sometimes spelled "Schmilblik" or "Schmilblic"). The aim of the game was to guess the name of an object given some of its characteristics (color, shape, use and so on). This TV games actually re-uses an idea from an old radio show created several years before and called "Tirlipot".Coluche used this word in one of his sketches, a parody ofGuy Lux 's show.The word quickly became very popular in
French language and was sometimes used as asynonym for "thing" or "stuff", or something designating a strange or unknown object. Nowadays, this word is frequently used to refer to some limited help provided by someone to solve a difficult problem. The idiom is actually 'Faire avancer le schmilblick' ("To make the schmilblick move/get ahead", literally).External links
* [http://pierredac.free.fr/schmil.htm Pierre Dac's original sketch] (French)
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