Phrases & Expressions: Sabotage

Did you know that the word sabotage originates from French? The story goes like this:

Back in the early 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution took off in France, laborers dropped their shovels and pick axes and left their ancestral fields for work in the growing numbers of factories and coal mines. They sought a better life; they hoped for a better economic future for their families.

But work was hard and conditions were unbearable. People were pushed to phyical extremes on bellies that remained empty day after day after day. They soon lost hope.

In those days, poor French laborers wore a type of wooden shoe or clog called a sabot. And when their hunger became unendurable and their hope forgotten they rose up as one to strike.

They used their wooden sabots to jam the machines of the factories all over France. With their sabots they stopped all means of production. They sabotaged the captains of industry.

Today, the strike (la grève) remains a powerful part of Fench culture, a way for workers to force their employers to sit up and take notice.

And it all started with a wooden shoe.