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In Manon des sources, Ugolin describes his infatuation with Manon, which the Papet says will "pass", but he uses an interesting turn of phrase:

Extrait du livre

ça te passera avant que ça me revienne

What does he mean by that? It would seem that the literal translation is "It will pass before it comes back to me," hence perhaps "Your infatuation will die before I ever become infatuated again," but that makes no sense to me.

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It's a variant of "Ça te passera avant que ça me reprenne", a jocular expression that means "you are young, you will forget it/get rid of it before I am very old and fall back into childhood."

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  • Interesting! Quite a peculiar way of expressing the fleetingness of something -- "before I grow senile (and we all know I'm about to)"!
    – Luke Sawczak
    Aug 18, 2022 at 14:55

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