L'avoir dans l'os

Literally: To have it in the bone

Example: “On a payé d'avance et le festival a été annulé : on l'a dans l'os.” — We paid in advance and the festival was canceled: we got the short end of the stick.

English equivalent: To get the short end of the stick

Origin: Os has carried several regional and slang senses — mouth in the Occitan south, nose, and the male member — but the one at work here is another. Failure and disappointment usually arrive by way of somebody else who has deceived you, and French reaches by habit for sodomy as its metaphor of being got the better of. The os is standing for the innermost part of a man, perhaps because the orifice sits so close to the sacrum and the coccyx, both familiar bones, or simply because a bone cut through is a ring. Gaston Esnault has the word in this sense from the end of the 19th century, but the expression itself only from the middle of the 20th.