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FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French phrase of the day: Pas dans mon assiette

This is not about crockery, instead you can use this very useful phrase to say a lot about your mood.

French phrase of the day: Pas dans mon assiette

Why do I need to know  je ne suis pas dans mon assiette?

If ever you find yourself a little out of sorts, this is the phrase for you.

What does it mean?

Je ne suis pas dans mon assiette literally translates as ‘I am not in my plate’. But it really means a general complaint about being out of sorts, not in a good mood or maybe a little under the weather. It's probably best translated as 'I'm not on good form'.

What are its origins?

To get to the roots of this phrase, we have to go all the way back to the 16th century.

The idea of a everybody having their own plate at meal times only entered common usage after the 16th century. Before that, there was a shared dish put in the middle of the table and everyone, apart from the extremely rich and regal, just helped themselves with their fingers. 

But the French word assiette actually has its origins in the verb asseoir or to sit, as people sat around the common dish. As a result, one of the meanings of the word has been la manière d'être assis or the “way of sitting” and, for equine lovers, the “position of the rider on his horse”.

This association of the word with a position gave it, figuratively, the meaning of a state of mind or a way of being. Hence, “I am not in my plate” being used to mean “I am not in my proper frame of mind”. 

How is it pronounced?

Juh swee pah donn monn ass-ee-yet

Examples

Je vais rentrer, je ne suis pas dans mon assiette ce matin.  I’m going home, I don’t feel like myself this morning.

Ça va, Emma? Tu n’as pas l’air dans ton assiette aujourd’hui. Are you okay, Emma? You don’t look in good form today.

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FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY

French Expression of the Day: Caillou dans la chaussure

This one might come in handy when you’re complaining about French bureaucracy.

French Expression of the Day: Caillou dans la chaussure

Why do I need to know Caillou dans la chaussure?

Because, sometimes, you just need to tell someone about your frustration with life’s little, annoying, metaphorically painful niggles.

What does it mean?

Caillou dans la chaussure – roughly pronounced kay-oo don la shass-your – translates as ‘stone in the shoe’, is a phrase as old as time, and means exactly what it says.

You can use this in a literal sense, for example if you’re hiking and get gravel in your boots, but it’s more usually used as a metaphor.

When someone says they have a pebble in their shoe, it means that something is not right – and it describes the metaphorical feeling of something troublesome that is more painful than it really needs to be and is creating bigger problems than its size would suggest.

You can use it about your own problems, and it’s also used to describe something that is a big problem for someone else – in English you might say something is the ‘millstone around their neck’ to describe a big, weighty problem that won’t go away.

Use it like this

Nouvelle-Calédonie : le gros caillou dans la chaussure de Macron – New Caledonia is the millstone around Macron’s neck

Nous connaissons tous cette sensation désagréable d’avoir un caillou coincé dans notre chaussure – We all know that unpleasant feeling of having a stone stuck in our shoe.

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