Être dans la mouise

Literally: To be in the gruel

Example: “Sans emploi et avec un loyer en retard, il est dans la mouise.” — Out of work and behind on rent, he's up the creek without a paddle.

English equivalent: Up the creek without a paddle

Origin: Mouise has meant destitution since the 1890s. It comes from the dialects of eastern France, where a mouesse or mousse was a coarse jam or a gruel, the word going back to German Mus, mush. Before it meant misery it meant bad soup, and after that colic. Panade and purée traveled the same road: both named a thick gruel — the Provençal panade was a soup built on bread — and both ended in poverty. Two things drove the shift. Thin soups and gruels were what you ate on hard days, so by metonymy they came to name the hardship itself; and their consistency was uncomfortably near the other thing mouise had passed through, which is the same image standing behind être dans la merde.