One of the expressions that came up in the French conversation group yesterday was (être) coincé dans une ornière, which means (to be) stuck in a rut.
Coincé [kwɛ̃.se] means stuck, jammed,wedged, stranded, uptight, stuck up or close-minded. It appears in expressions like:
- etre coincé = to be stuck (fast), to get stuck
- etre coincé dans = to be marooned in
- etre coincé entre = to be wedged between
- etre coincé avec qn = to be stuck with sb
- etre coincé avec qch = to be stuck with sth
- rester coincé = to get stuck
- La clé est coincée dans la serrure = The key is stuck in the lock
- La porte est coincée = The door’s jammed
- Il est un peu coincé = He’s a bit uptight
It comes from coincer (to jam, catch (out), nab, stick), which comes from coin (wedge, cornerpiece, corner, area, part, place, spot), from the Old French coin, from the Latin cuneus (wedge, wedge shape, troops in a wedge formation, an army), from the Proto-Indo-European *h₂ḱū (sting), which is also the root of such words as the English coin and cuneiform, the Irish cúinne (angle, corner, nook), the Welsh cŷn (chisel) and the Albanian kunj (peg, spike).
Ornière [ɔʁ.njɛʁ] is a rut, habit, routine or cart track, and appears in such expressions as;
- suivre l’ornière = to be in a rut
- sortir de l’ornière = to get out of a rut / spot
- dans l’ornière = in a rut
- dans une ornière = cornered
- avec ornière = potholed
It comes from the Old French ordiere, from the Vulgar Latin *orbitaria, from the Latin orbita (a track or rut made by a wheel, path, track, circuit, orbit, impression, mark), form orbis (rind, circle, orbit).
Another way to say you’re stuck in a rut in French is s’encroûter, to get into a rut, to get set in one’s ways, to become encrusted (“to encrust onself”).
Sources: Reverso, Wiktionary
I wonder if the English word “sconce” is also cognate with “coincé “.
Sconce comes from the Old French esconce (lantern), from the Latin absconsus (hidden), from abscondō (hide) – so it doesn’t come from the same root.
To be [stuck] “in a rut” in a figurative sense means of course to be in a situation which is repetitive in an uncontrolled or undesirable way. A person who is stuck in a rut in a verbal sense is said to be a “broken [phonograph] record”. In this case, the “rut” is the tiny spiraling sound groove in the record that has been damaged so it no longer spirals inward but repeats once each rotation. So, in a sense, the record is “broken” because it is failing to continue along its normal rut, but is now travelling an abnormal one.