FrenchSucrer les fraises
Meaning: To have trembling hands; by extension, to be doddering.
Literally: To sugar the strawberries
Example: “Mon grand-père commence à sucrer les fraises, il n'arrive plus à tenir sa tasse.” — My grandfather's hands have started to shake; he can't hold his cup steady anymore.
Origin: The shaking of a sugar spoon held over a bowl of strawberries resembles the tremor of degenerative illness. Aurélien Scholl's Poivre et Sel (1901) has a colonel joke that fifty years of absinthe left a soldier shaking so badly the affliction became 'precious for sugaring strawberries'. The popular claim that it refers to the pleated ruffs called fraises worn in the 16th and 17th centuries has no support — no citation predates around 1900.
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