Oven : nm Un four is a work generally vaulted, circular in shape, with an opening in front, and where bread, pastry, etc. are baked.
Open your mouth like an oven. By extension: open a large oven.
It is dark as in an oven. You couldn't see more than in an oven.
Four: Complete failure, speaking of a dramatic performance, and by extension, of any performance, meeting, artistic manifestation.
(This expression was once said of actors who dismissed the spectators because they did not have enough people to cover their expenses. The hall, deprived of ordinary lighting, then looked like an oven).
Heat the oven: get drunk. To have heated the oven: to be in a state of intoxication.
Heat the oven: drink a lot.
Oven: Formerly, the sex of the woman you put in the oven.
- The expression "Not being able to be (at the same time) in the oven and in the mill": Not being able to be everywhere at the same time - Not being able to do several things at the same time.
This expression is attested at the beginning of the XNUMXth century.
It comes from feudal law, when peasants or vassals who wanted to grind their grain and leather their bread were required to use the common mill and oven provided by the overlord, for a fee (just as they had to use his wine press to obtain their wine).
The two tasks being necessarily carried out one after the other, it was not possible to be at the same time in the mill and in the oven (one said besides at the mill et in the oven, everyone takes their turn).