![\"m\u00e9nager](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/fence.gif\")
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If you’re not sure about something, or don’t want to commit yourself to something, you’re said to be sitting on the fence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In French you’re said to be m\u00e9nager la ch\u00e8vre et le chou<\/strong> (“to look after the goat and the cabbage”). Another translation of this phrase, according to Wiktionary<\/a>, is to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds<\/strong>. Has anyone heard this expression?<\/p>\n Are there other ways to refer to fence-sitting?<\/p>\n A related word is: ch\u00e8vrechoutisme<\/strong> (“goat-cabbage-ism”), which is apparently an expression used in Belgium to mean “A policy of attempting to please everybody or reconcile conflicting options.” [source<\/a>]. A person who persues such a policy is known as a ch\u00e8vrechoutiste<\/strong> (“goat-cabbage-ist”) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n The word m\u00e9nager<\/strong> means to handle carefully, to treat considerately, to use sparingly, to take care of, to look after, to arrange, to put in or to make. The reflexive version of the verb, se m\u00e9nager<\/strong>, means “not to push oneself too hard”. As an adjective m\u00e9nager<\/strong> means household, domestic, housewife or canteen, and m\u00e9nage<\/strong> means housework or (married) couple, as in m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois<\/strong> [source<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’re not sure about something, or don’t want to commit yourself to something, you’re said to be sitting on the fence. In French you’re said to be m\u00e9nager la ch\u00e8vre et le chou (“to look after the goat and the cabbage”). Another translation of this phrase, according to Wiktionary, is to run with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,111,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-french","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18313"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18317,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18313\/revisions\/18317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}