A Tout Bout De Champ

Imagine you're a farmer in the old days...

This morning, the weather practically begs you to stay under the blankets. But your enormous field behind the farmhouse isn't going to plow itself. At the crack of dawn, you harness your sturdy draft horse (or your oxen, if you're feeling especially medieval) and hitch up your plow. You take your place at one corner of the field and begin plowing in long, straight rows.

When you reach the end, you turn around, move over a little, and head back in the opposite direction. The field is long. Really long. By the time you make it back to where you started, you turn around again... and again... and again. By day's end, you've spent hours repeating the exact same motion, making U-turn after U-turn at the end of every row. It's not hard to imagine that either you—or one of your equally exhausted neighbors—came up with the expression.

Today, à tout bout de champ is used when someone does or says something far too often. It often carries a hint of annoyance, although it can also be neutral or humorous. Depending on the context, it can be translated as constantly, all the time, over and over again, or every chance they get.

Origin

Originally, in the 14th century, people said "à chascun bout de champ." In the 16th century, it became "à tous bouts de champ," and by the 17th century, it had evolved into the modern "à tout bout de champ."

The expression is simply a metaphor whose meaning shifted from space to time. Originally, it referred to covering a field with endless back-and-forth passes. Over time, it came to describe something that happens over and over again, constantly, or at every opportunity.

So the next time someone says "Il se plaint à tout  bout de champ" ("He's complaining all the time"), just picture an exhausted farmer making yet another turn at the end of a seemingly endless field - and be grateful your biggest repetitive task today is probably refreshing your inbox.

Examples

Il vérifie son téléphone à tout bout de champ.
He checks his phone every five minutes.

Elle parle de ses vacances à tout bout de champ.
She talks about her vacation every chances he gets.