"As early as early morning": what does this expression mean?

“For fear that the trails would be overrun with tourists, hikers planned to leave early in the morning.”

Certainly, it is not in the mouth of a teenager the body slumped in the sofa that you will hear this sentence.

Today fallen into disuse, the expression

remains no less charming.

When it appeared in the 19th century, says the

, it was said

.

To discover

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Familiar if ever there was one, before its use became established shortly before the 20th century, the phrase appeared in various forms.

Also, Balzac, in

, writes in the following dialogue between Madame Vauquer and her servant, Sylvie:

“Your residents certainly had the devil in their bodies;

they all decanillé from the pattern-jacket.

"Speak well, Sylvie," resumed Madame Vauquer.

The animal in question

"Minet", "minette", "jacquet", "jacquette", what does that mean?

If it is easy to understand that the first two terms qualify the cat or the little cat, it is less easy to know that the backgammon and the jacket are actually squirrels.

As the rabbit has the nickname Jeannot, the squirrel was once called "little Jacques".

And in this story, it's a lot of animals that are involved.

From the old French "potron", "poistron", from the late Latin "posterio", which designates the "behind", according to the French Academy, "from potron-minet" literally means "as soon as the cat shows his posterior.

But then why?

The answer is to be found in the way of life of the animal.

Reputed to be a very early riser (and surely much more so than the squirrel since it supplanted it in the expression), a person who gets up “as early as early morning” is therefore a person who gets up early.

However, be careful not to distort the phrase.

To say "cowardly"-twink, as it happens to be written, would be to speak of a "cowardly" and "timid" cat.

However, there is no doubt that such an animal is ready to confront the freshness of the early mornings.