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THE TERM WAS RECENTLY USED BY A FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TO ACCUSE PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON OF BEING ‘DESPERATE’ Should you ever need to express to someone that you are in dire straits
– which, of course, we hope is never the case – or you wish to describe someone who is really up against it, in a whole heap of bother from which there seems little hope of escape, there is
a very useful French expression to employ: _être aux abois_. It was used by French presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse this week (March 16) to accuse President Emmanuel Macron of being
“desperate” by considering autonomy for Corsica after violent protests there. She said, _“En Corse, on a un président AUX ABOIS qui cède face à la violence”._ READ MORE:WHY ARE THERE ANGRY
PROTESTS AGAINST THE FRENCH STATE IN CORSICA? The origin of the phrase, like so many in the French language, lies in the vocabulary of rural affairs – in this case, hunting. Prior to the
15th century, _être aux abois_ referred to the last-ditch, desperate situation of a beast such as a stag or wild boar, encircled by the baying pack of hounds after a hunt. The animal was
deemed to be facing _les abois_ – the barks of the hounds. However, by the end of that century, the phrase _être aux abois_ had gone beyond the hunting world to signify anybody who found
themselves “being reduced to the last extremity”. According to Trésor de la langue française – the whopping 16-volume dictionary of 19th- and 20th-century French, published by the Centre de
Recherche pour un Trésor de la Langue Française from 1971 to 1994, and now available online the phrase assumed a certain literary cachet. It “took on a literary value that stems from the
noble character of the language of hunting”. One specific usage of_ être aux abois_ is when describing someone who finds themselves in severe financial difficulties, a state for which the
French language has other bespoke phrases. _Être dans la dèche_ is a good one, whose origins lie in gambling argot – la dèche meant monetary losses (possibly from the verb _déchoir_, meaning
to fall from grandeur). Later it became a slang phrase used by materially deprived prisoners. RELATED ARTICLES ÇA ME GONFLE!: HOW TO EXPRESS YOUR IRRITATION (OR LOVE) IN FRENCH SEVEN WAYS
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