Transcript

Hello everyone, hope you're well.

Welcome to this video, where we'll take a look at a French expression in just a few minutes. Today, we're going to look at an expression that was requested of me by a subscriber.

This expression means having work to do. You've asked me what it means and where it comes from. So let's find out together today.

Having your work cut out for you means you've got a lot of work to do, a lot of tasks to accomplish. For example, if you're organizing a party, you might say the guests are arriving in an hour and I've still got work to do.

I have to decorate the room, bake a cake, prepare cocktails and do my make-up. I still have a lot to do. I've still got a lot of work to do.

Here's some more context to help you understand. If you've just bought a new apartment or house and there's a lot of work to be done, you might say there's so much work to be done to make this apartment livable and pretty.

The kitchen has to be redone, walls broken up, repainted and decorated. We certainly have our work cut out for us.

But where does this expression come from and why is it used in French?

There are many stories around this expression. We'll have two together.

The first story explains that the origin of this expression, avoir du pain sur la planche, dates back to the 19th century. As peasants ate a lot of bread, it was essential to have sufficient reserves for the winter.

And when we said we had our work cut out for us, it meant we had enough reserves to see us through. So there's this metaphor between bread and the tasks at hand.

So, it's no longer food reserves that we have, but work reserves. So we still have a lot of work to do.

The second explanation for the origin of this expression dates back to the same period. Judges used to give bread rations or portions to criminals sentenced to hard labor.

So their punishment was to work for the state, which meant hard labor. So, this expression could also come from there. Having your work cut out for you, receiving rations of bread, it presaged a rather difficult future with very hard work.