What does the expression sweeten the strawberries mean?
To sweeten strawberries is to be shaken with an uncontrollable tremor often due to old age. So, by extension, “to be senile“.
It comes from a dubious and rather cruel analogy.
This expression is attested at the end of the 19th century. With the Ngram viewer tool, we found an example in “Paris aux cent coups” (1888) by Aurélien Scholl, French journalist, playwright, columnist and novelist:
“The statesmen of 1870 are evidently childish and good at most at sweetening strawberries”.
However, it was around the middle of the 20th century that the expression seemed to take off. For exemple :
- The artistic figaro (1932): “On the wall can be read announcements of this new and fine genre: we ask for a little old man who has the tremblote to sweeten the strawberries”.
- Le Passe-muraille by Marcel Aymé (1943): “I'm shaking all over, look at my hands, I'm sugaring strawberries, my legs are shivering (…).
- Le vin de Paris by Marcel Aymé (1947): “Here is Félicien who starts sweetening strawberries when he is not thirty years old, and his father, therefore Achille Guérillot, a drinker too, ah! yes, a drinker”.
And, today, the expression is still used even in song, the proof with the singer La Grande Sophie. She titled one of her songs “Sugar Strawberries” (2002). It illustrates the obsession with passing time and the preparation for the last journey:
“If there's a moment that I can't foresee
The end of the race or the hour of my departure
Who will hold my hand,….
…..I will go and sweeten the strawberries, up there on the cliff…”
