French culinary expression: NOT BEING ON YOUR PLATE
It's hard, when you hear this very common expression, not to imagine a table set with guests all absorbed by the contents of their plate!
However, this plate has nothing to do with a porcelain culinary container, but designates the position of balance, the way of sitting, of being in the saddle (we speak of "the good plate" of a horserider).
Probably deriving from the old expression still used by George Sand, "to get out of one's plate" - which applied to someone who showed by his conduct that his natural balance was broken, that he had "gone out of his hinges", as we would say more readily today - the expression "not being on your plate" appeared in the 19th century and became fixed in the negative form.
It can apply just as well to someone who is tired, woozy, as to someone in the grip of an idea, a worry that monopolizes and destabilizes him. In all cases, physical as well as psychological, it is the expression that seems most likely to transcribe a malaise whose cause is not proven.
