French Word of the Day: Jusqu'au-boutiste
Are you one of these? Or perhaps you have a particularly intransigent friend?
Are you one of these? Or perhaps you have a particularly intransigent friend?
Because it's a common caricature of French politicians, which supposedly originated as a timely war reference.
As you may know, jusqu’au bout is a common French expression that means ‘all the way’ or ‘until the end’. Jusqu’à means ‘until the’ and le bout means 'the end'.
A jusqu'au-boutiste, roughly pronounced zhus-kooh boo-teest (listen here ), therefore is a person willing to go all the way for their beliefs. It's an 'all-the-way-ist' - in the same way we call followers of communism 'communists'.
The phrase also has an 'ism' - jusqu'au-boutisme - meaning the culture of people who will stop at nothing, but the 'ist' use to describe a person is more common.
According to Expressionfrançaises.fr, the expression originated during the 20th century, during World War I. Les jusqu'au-boutistes wouldn't give up, no matter the (human) cost.
Today it's a caricature more than anything, often used as a pejorative way of talking about politicians who are too 'radical', or even 'extremist', according to the French online dictionary l’Internaute .
But it can also simply mean ne pas baisser les bras (to not give up).
Example in the French press: Écrits antisémites de Jordan Bardella : Marine Le Pen au risque d’être entraînée dans la défense jusqu’au-boutiste du président du RN ( Le Monde ) - Jordan Bardella’s antisemitic writings: Marine Le Pen risks being dragged into an uncompromising defence of the RN president
C'est impossible de négocier avec ces syndicats jusqu'au-boutistes. - It's impossible to negotiate with these fanatical unions.
Il faut arrêter ce jusqu'au-boutisme ridicule. Il faudra plutôt trouver des compromis. - This ridiculous extremism must stop. We need to rather find compromises.
Sans les jusqu'au-boutistes on n'aurait jamais fait de réels progrès sur les sujets comme les droits des femmes. - Without the radicals, we would have never made real progress on topics such as women's rights.
