À la carte À la carte In restaurants, à la carte is the practice of ordering individual dishes from a menu in a restaurant, as opposed to "table d'hôte", where a set menu is offered. It is an early 19th century loan from French meaning "according to the menu". The individual dishes to be ordered may include side dishes, or the side dishes may be offered separately, in which case, they are also considered "à la carte". The earliest examples of "à la carte" are from 1816 for the adjectival use ("à la carte meal", for example) and from 1821 for the adverbial
When pigs fly Flying pigs!" An identical phrase, used to express impossibilities, exists in Romanian, "Când o zbura porcul", literally meaning "When the pig shall fly"; an equivalent also implying an animal is "La Paștele cailor", literally: "on horses' Easter". Similar phrases in English include "", the Latin expression "to the Greek calends", and "and monkeys might fly out of my butt", popularized in Wayne's World skits and movies. They are examples of adynata. In Finnish, the expression ""kun lehmät lentävät"" (when cows fly) is used because of its alliteration. In French, the most common expression is ""quand les poules auront des dents""