Le mot du jour : “Être au bout du rouleau”
I don’t know if, like me, you have children at home, but mine are completely “au bout du rouleau”.
So what does this mean?
“Être au bout du rouleau” means to be at the end of the roll, so to be exhausted, basically.
This expression has nothing to do with loo roll (even if being at the end of a loo roll can be a problem! 🙂).
It goes back to the Middle Ages, when books were made of sheets glued together side by side and rolled inside a parchment to protect it. So when you were “au bout du rouleau”, then you had nothing left to read.
Over time, the meaning changed into the one today of having no energy, no resources left.
So to all the students out there : Tenez bon, les vacances ne sont pas loin ! (Hold on, the half-term break is not far!)