Hello, very very dear friends! I hope you are well. Thank you for joining me for this new episode of the Authentic French podcast. And today, we are going to study together a rather funny expression, "manger à tous les râteliers". A very very nice expression.
Before that, a little confidential information. Few people know about it, I must admit. You know, I talked about it in previous weeks that registrations for the Authentic French Academy closed on January 10 (October 10) and registrations are closed 90% of the year. Since there were some problems, I will spare you the details, I will not describe everything that happened, but there were some problems around the 9th and 10th. We were under a lot of pressure to reopen registrations, which we did for a few days.
But this time, it's over. It's impossible oman whatsapp number data to come and tell us behind: "Johan, there were too many people on the site, it was crashing at my place. I need you to give me another day". No, it's over, it's the last of the last, as they say in French. So tomorrow, the 16th, it will be over. If you want to join us, it's really today or never and we'll put the link in the description. Sorry about that.
I hate having to open and close, but we really do it to welcome our members in the best possible conditions and to ensure that our members are supported. They are supported during the integration process. So that's why we are permanently closing registrations. But now, we had to. There are so many people who missed the registrations that we had to reopen them, but they will be closed tomorrow and there will be no point in coming to ask us to reopen them. They will remain closed until the end of the year, that's for sure.
So I invite you to go visit the first link in the description right now to make sure you don't forget and we're waiting for you, I'm waiting for you here to explain the expression "eat at all the racks". OK. You went there, sure? Has everyone visited the link? I'll stop my jokes and move on to the meaning of the words that make up the expression "eat at all the racks".
The verb "to eat" means to feed, chew and swallow food for survival. To eat is to nourish oneself. We all need to eat and I think you all know what that means.
"All" means all objects, individuals, in a particular context. If I say "we are all here", it means no one is missing. If we are a football team of 11 people and we are all here, well there are 11 of us. There are not 10 of us, where there would be one elsewhere, there are 11 of us, we are all here. "All" means the whole.
And the word "rack", it's probably the word that worries you the most, it's a device, it's a small system for installing food that is intended for animals, often on the farm. Rack, it's the device for installing food for the animals on the farm.
And this expression, "eating at all the troughs", dates back to the 18th century. At the time, a trough was a kind of feeder hung on the wall and easily accessible to all the animals. The animals went there and it was very easy for them to eat from their trough, but no, the trough is supposed to feed the animals next door. So some took advantage of the opportunity to eat twice as much. They took what was in their own trough and they took what was in the other animals' troughs, so they ate twice as much.