We think we know our mother tongue.
Since the time that we speak it.
And yet, a few surprises remain.
French still manages to surprise us.
So with the lover who is still trying to charm his beauty, Molière's language is full of spice.
Some words sometimes have meanings we don't know.
The word
“load shedding”
is the very example of this.
We of course know its most common meaning.
Let's open the Larousse to confirm it.
“To relieve”
means
“to reduce the load of something”
:
“we relieved the car of two suitcases”
.
It also designates the fact of
"robbing someone, stealing it"
:
"a trickster relieved her of her bag at the cinema"
.
It is also said to
“perform a load shedding”
.
From the anger of the demonstrators ...
But did you know that outside our borders, the word designates something quite different?
Beyond the African continent, the
"load shedding"
is a
"water or electricity cut"
, notes Linda Giguère in
Linda's mood
on TV5 Monde, which relied on the knowledge of the Quebec linguist Myriam Bergeron Maguire .
“When demand is too high, we cut to avoid breakdowns, often during expressions of anger.
Power cuts are a plague for Africans. ”
... to the deprogramming of beds
Now let's go to Canada.
In the land of the old New France, we also suffer from load shedding, but in a completely different area.
No more power cuts.
There, the word is now part of the lexicon of the health crisis.
“The load shedding was put in place a year ago in Canada, to unload hospitals,”
explains the columnist.
Heart operations and kidney transplants have been deprogrammed to make room for coronavirus patients.
As everywhere, not enough beds, not enough resources, not enough staff.
"Note that this meaning appeared
" during the H1N1 flu in 2009. "
... through the economy
In Quebec, the word is now part of the
“business lexicon”
.
Quebecers invented
“business shedding”
and
“asset shedding”
to get rid of production in times of crisis.
They even created
“political offloading”!
Without forgetting the aeronauts
As for the expression
"throw ballast"
, it comes to us neither more nor less from the hot-air balloon!
“The aeronauts threw sandbags over the basket, so that the balloon rose,”
says Linda Giguère.
This is why
"to throw"
or
"to release ballast"
means
"to put water in your wine"
,
"to make concessions."
Figuratively, the expression "to relieve someone" means "to dispossess him, to steal him". Funny detail: the word “ballast” comes from the Dutch
last
“weight, load”. The former Gascon and the regional French of the Southwest borrowed the word from the English
last, lest.