There's an expression in French that describes what we might call "the good life" — it's la vie de château. The definition in French is: une existence très agréable passée dans le luxe et les loisirs... It describes a time when "you've got it made." It's like living in a castle — luxurious and leisurely.
That's not what it's like around here right now. Instead of la vie de château, we're living la vie de chantier. I made that up, but it fits. What does chantier mean? Well, one definition is something like "a construction site" — with all the disruption and dirt that entails.
Another definition is this one: Endroit où sont entassés ou travaillés des matériaux de construction — a place where building materials are stored or worked on. That's more the case here, since there's no real construction going on in our hamlet. Even so, we get the disruptions of the chantier...
Instead, the work is going on down the hill, a kilometer or so from our house. I'm not even sure what the work is all about. Maybe the work crew is undergrounding electrical wires, or fiber optics cable. Nobody has told us anything. All we know is that the crew seems to be working in the ditches along the road. But they didn't set up their chantier down there.
The crew is working down along the river road, but they are eating breakfast and lunch almost in our back yard, in one of the trailers you see in these photos. And they're keeping their backhoe (tractopelle) right outside our back gate. It doesn't help that the weather is so rainy right now. Rain means mud, when you live out in the country. I hope the job is finished soon.
"la vie de château"
ReplyDeleteLike "to the manor born." if that's your house to the left in the first picture, they are close!
That's not our house in the first picture. Our property is just behind the hedge that is partially visible on the left side of the photo. And our back gate, which we leave through for walks with the dog, is behind where I'm standing to take the photo.
DeleteThe expression en chantier means something is in progress. If you're a novel writer you could have several books en chantier.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I don't understand is the etymology of the term chantier.
DeleteI, too, do not understand the etymology given in CNRTL.
DeleteHere is what I found in French
L’ORIGINE DU MOT CHANTIER
www.secured-france.fr
Historiquement, le terme chantier était utilisé dans le domaine de la marbrerie où il désignait une table en pierre d’environ six pouces d’épaisseur, supportée par deux consoles *, et sur laquelle on taillait et l’on polissait le marbre. L’origine du mot chantier est latine. Elle vient du mot latin cantherius qui signifie « canasson » ; « chevron ». C’est donc un mot qui est passé du domaine hippique au domaine technique en prenant le sens de « bois de soutien ». De la même manière que le mot bûcher est passé du sens de « bois » à celui de « travailler ».
À la fin du dix-septième siècle, le mot chantier prend le sens d’« atelier extérieur ». Au dix-huitième siècle, l’Encyclopédie précise qu’ « être sur le chantier » se dit pour quelqu’un qui est en train de travailler actuellement.
On ne voit pas très clairement la dérivation de cheval à chantier, tel qu'on le comprend aujourd'hui.
Is canasson as bois de soutien related in any way to shop horses that can be translated as tréteaux?
*Consoles, peut-on parler de chevalets, de shop horses?
The word or expression I was trying to remember wasn't shop horse, but the right one just came back to me out of the blue. It was saw horse! What's the difference?
DeleteI'm not sure I know the term "shop horse" but sawhorse, yes.
DeleteHow chantier evolved from "a piece of wood" into "sawhorse" and finally into "a place where wood or other contruction material are kept" or "construction site" seems very complicated and mysterious. How it came to mean "a mess" in the sense of "disorder" seems more straightforward. Our house was un chantier for the whole summer, and it's still not as well organized as we want it to be. We have plenty of work to keep us busy this winter.
DeleteAs I understand it, the origin of the word chantier itself is very clear, it comes from the latin word cantherius meaning a nag [sawhorse, chevalet (tréteau)?] as bois de soutien of a table made for any kind of work. Now, I suppose the glissement from chantier as sawhorse to the the name of the place were it is used for some kind of work must have hapened at some point in time. Évolution du langage?
DeleteThe real actual meaning of chantier is a place were work is being done and in progress and probably somewhat messy, not the other way around.
Probably by means of a synecdoche.
DeleteWell, that's a whole lot of ... something goin' on.
ReplyDeleteI thought your mayor lived nearby and you were going to ask her what was what with all of that equipment. Maybe they figure it's safer to park things near nice, law-abiding residents than in a more public place.
You're probably right. The mayor/neighbor is always so busy that we hesitate to bother her with questions. The town does own that land out by the pond, after all.
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