{"id":5928,"date":"2011-09-23T09:42:49","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T09:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=5928"},"modified":"2011-09-23T09:42:49","modified_gmt":"2011-09-23T09:42:49","slug":"fence-sitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=5928","title":{"rendered":"Fence sitting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I learnt the French equivalent of the English idiom, to sit on the fence (to be undecided in opinion, or neutral in action) – m\u00e9nager la ch\u00e8vre et le choux<\/em> [source<\/a>], or “to keep the goat and the cabbage”. This phrase is also translated as “to face both ways”, “to keep everyone happy”, “have a foot in both camps” and “to play both ends against the middle”.<\/p>\n

As a verb m\u00e9nager<\/em> means to handle carefully, to treat considerately, to take care not to hurt sb’s pride, to take care of, to look after or to arrange. As an adjective it means household, domestic, housework, housewife or canteen. The related noun, m\u00e9nage<\/em>, means household, housework or housekeeping.<\/p>\n

Expressions including m\u00e9nager<\/em> and m\u00e9nage<\/em> include:<\/p>\n

– m\u00e9nager ses forces – to save one’s strength
\n– ne pas m\u00e9nager – to spare no effort.
\n– robot m\u00e9nager – food processor
\n – appareil m\u00e9nager – domestic appliance
\n– jeune m\u00e9nage – young couple
\n– argent du m\u00e9nage – housekeeping money
\n– chef de m\u00e9nage – head of the household
\n– chocolat de m\u00e9nage – plain chocolate
\n– (mal)heureux en m\u00e9nage – (un)happily married
\n – m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois
\n– (grand) m\u00e9nage de printemps – spring cleaning <\/p>\n

Etymology: m\u00e9nager<\/em> and m\u00e9nage<\/em> come from the Old French word manoir<\/em> (to remain, stay, dwell, reside), from the Latin man\u0113re \/ maneo<\/em> (same meaning as manoir<\/em>) [source<\/a>], from the Proto-Indo-European root *men-<\/em> (to stay) [source<\/a>], which is also the root of the French words maison<\/em> (house) and manoir<\/em> (manor house), of the English word manor, and of mansion, which is found in French and English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I learnt the French equivalent of the English idiom, to sit on the fence (to be undecided in opinion, or neutral in action) – m\u00e9nager la ch\u00e8vre et le choux [source], or “to keep the goat and the cabbage”. This phrase is also translated as “to face both ways”, “to keep everyone happy”, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,125,10,15,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-idioms","category-language","category-latin","category-proto-indo-european"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928","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=5928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}