Corvée
Extra Muros continues the serialization of Pardon My French, a light-hearted look at some of the French expressions that have taken up residence in the Anglosphere. As a rule, most installments of this series explain, at some length, two or three related phrases. The one that follows, however, employs but a handful paragraphs to tell the tale of a word that crossed the Channel by itself.
In the days of the ancien régime, French peasants were, from time to time, obliged to donate their labor to public works. (These, as you might imagine, included highways, canals, and cinémas well-suited to celebrations of the oeuvre of Gérard Dépardieu.)
When this practice went the way of the powdered wig, French people repurposed its name to describe drudgery of any sort. We Anglophones, however, reserve the word for pick-and-shovel work carried out on a grand scale by people in no position to say “merci, mais non.” “Saïd Pasha used the corvée in making the Suez Canal, and Isma'il Pasha boldly used it in digging a canal in Upper Egypt, the chief object of which was to water his own private estates.”1
For Further Reading:
E.A. Wallis Budge The Nile: Notes for Travellers in Egypt (London: Thomas Cook, 1905) page 138