Taper sur le système

Meaning: To get on someone's nerves.

Language: French

Literally: To run on the bean / to bang on the system

Example: “Son sifflement permanent commence à me taper sur le système.” — His constant whistling is starting to get on my nerves.

English equivalent: To get on someone's nerves

Category: Food & Drink

Origin: The système version is the straightforward one: it appears around the 1850s as a clipping of taper sur le système nerveux, banging on someone's nervous system. The haricot is the puzzle, and the lexicographers have never settled it — even its date is loose, placed at the end of the 19th century by some and the start of the 20th by others. The vegetable is a red herring. Slang gave haricot a scatter of other senses — the toe, the head, the penis, the testicles — none of which obviously fits, and several of which raise the awkward question of why the word is singular. The verb haricoter, which in the first half of the 19th century meant to pester, may have fed into it too. Courir is easier: from the 16th century courir quelqu'un already meant to badger them, probably by way of a sense of pursuing someone too assiduously, which will annoy anyone.