What does “avoir de la colonne vertébrale” mean in French?

Avoir de la colonne vertébrale is to have backbone: the moral spine to take a stand and own your choices when it would be easier to look away. French borrows the literal spine just as English does, praising real courage and conviction over a soft, easily-bent character. You hear it both ways — avoir de la colonne vertébrale and avoir une colonne vertébrale — and most often in the negative, when someone manque de colonne vertébrale.

Colonne vertébrale is literally the spinal column, the stack of vertebrae that holds the body upright — so the metaphor paints the same upright-versus-spineless picture as English. The negative is the most common form: to manquer de colonne vertébrale is to be spineless. The flip side is avoir l’échine souple, “to have a supple spine” — bowing and scraping, bending to whoever’s in charge.