Learn French Idioms With Me #2/100
Trivia: This common French idiom means “to run low.”
Être au bout de son rouleau: Today, this expression can mean “to have used up all of one’s arguments,” “to be exhausted,” or even “to be broke” (financially speaking). However, it is in the XIV century that the origin of this expression lies.
These were times when books looked quite different: pages glued together in series, forming one great long page, rolled around un role: a baton made of boxwood or ivory.
This word suffered many transformations over the years. For example, for smaller parchments, the French word rollet would be used instead.
Especially in theater, script scrolls were rolled around this small baton — thus, one would say that an actor who obtained a small role had a rollet (meaning few lines).
Another diminutive of the word role that gained a different meaning over the centuries is rouleau. This referred to the paper rolls (wrappers) for coins that are still used today (so they say, as I haven’t seen one in a while!).
Therefore, being “at the end of your roll” would mean that you’ve exhausted your financial resources — although this could extrapolate to your physical, emotional, or intellectual ones.
A French expression that has a similar meaning to être au bout de son rouleau is être/rouler sur la jante, an idiom also used in Tunisia. Although it also means “to run on fumes,” it literally translates to “to run on the rim” (of your vehicle’s wheels, that is).
And although not French but German, this next expression seems to also mean “running on empty”: auf dem letzten Loch pfeifen — what is funny (and mysterious!) about this one is that it literally means “to blow through your last hole.” So mysterious…
Here are some more French expressions and their English translations that are somewhat synonymous with être au bout de son rouleau:
être arrivé(e) au bout de la rue = to have come to the end of the road courir court = être sans resources = to be running short au bout de la corde = at the end of one’s rope être lessivé(e) / essoré(e) = to be wrung out enfilé(e) dehors = strung out être au bout de sa bride = to be at the end of one’s tether être complètement fauché(e) = to be dead broke être épuisé(e) = to be exhausted
The linguist Jean Maillet provides us with even more synonymic idioms: être démuni (“to be destitute”), être fauché comme les blés (to be stony broke — or “wheaty”-broke as the French say), être à sec (to be dried up), être raide (to be flat broke), être sans un radis (to be “without a radish”), sans le sou (penniless), sans une thune (without dough), dans la dèche (in the ditch), dans la mouise (to be “up the creek,” stony broke), or sur la paille (to be “on the straw,” peniless).
I will leave you with another international idiom with a very interesting origin: in the Canton of the Grisons in Switzerland, someone at the end of their resources is ora sils curontin (“on their 41st”).
The number 41 is a combination of 40, which symbolizes hardship, deprivation, or withdrawal (think of “quarantine”), and 31, the symbol of long —perhaps financially problematic — months. And although it does not make sense mathematically, how can we not be delighted by such an original backstory?
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