Table : noun A backgammon is a flat surface erected at a suitable height to receive all that is necessary for the meal.
Sit / go to the table: confess (eat the piece); to confess (see the origin of this expression below).
Under the table: secretly.
Go around the table: eat all the dishes that are served in a dinner.
He behaves better at the table than on horseback: he is a big eater.
Green table: game table.
Have a table d'hôte in your stomach: eat greedily and insatiably.
Clean slate: To do a complete cleaning in a house; liquidate a backlog, renew a staff after having wiped the slate clean (see below for the origin of this expression).
Rolling under the table: getting drunk during the meal.
Eating at the big table: being an informant / informant of the police.
Thirteen at the table: it's a thirteen at the table: an indicator, a balance.
Go under the table: defraud the taxman by giving bribes.
Thus in slang, the one who had ended up eating (the piece) or who had sat down to eat thus became the one who had confessed.
– The expression “to wipe the slate clean”: to consider as null and non-existent ideas of conduct adopted previously,
reject them altogether – Start the search procedure for something from scratch (explanation, solution, criminal, etc.).
The notion of “clean slate” comes from Latin tabula rasa, which designated a virgin wax tablet without any inscription: Aristotle made a metaphor of it to represent the soul at birth, virgin of all knowledge and all ideas. We will find this image of a blank medium on which nothing was yet written in the XNUMXth century in philosophy.
The expression “clean slate” dates back to the XNUMXth century. It takes up the idea of virginity but voluntarily provoked: we erase, we forget everything that exists, what has already been used and we start from scratch, on new bases.
One can easily imagine a work table cluttered with documents that have been uselessly used to move forward in directions with no real exit, a table that with a movement of the arm one clears of everything that litters it (the table comes clean) in an attempt to set off again with new hypotheses, in new directions, on new bases.