/sɛ lə kadɛ də me susi/ lit. ‘it’s the youngest of my worries’
French idiom, familiar. To not care about something at all.
Draft Not yet checked by a native French speaker.
How do people use C’est le cadet de mes soucis
?
Familiar but not rude, so you can say it at work or to your in-laws without trouble, and it often comes out with a shrug. The possessive follows whoever doesn’t care: “le cadet de tes soucis”, “le cadet de ses soucis”, “le cadet de leurs soucis”. It usually sits after “c’est”, or after a subject that names the thing nobody cares about: “son avis, c’est le cadet de mes soucis”.
C’est le cadet de mes soucis
in real sentences
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C’est le cadet de mes soucis.
That’s the least of my worries.
Tatoeba, sentence by Blabla, translation by PeterR, CC BY 2.0 FR
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Franchement, ma chère, c’est le cadet de mes soucis.
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
Tatoeba, sentence by Leono, translation by Leono, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does C’est le cadet de mes soucis
come from?
A cadet is a younger or youngest child, and French Wiktionary explains that the word is used here in the sense of “last”: of all my worries, this one comes last in line. The oldest example it quotes is from 1858, in a French translation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford, where the narrator remarks that the lawyer wasn’t afraid to use such a “trivial” expression. We found no record of when it first appeared.
Mistakes learners make with C’est le cadet de mes soucis
Swapping the article. It’s always “le cadet”, never “un cadet de mes soucis”, and learners also forget to change “mes” when they’re talking about someone else (“il s’en fiche, c’est le cadet de ses soucis”).
Other French idioms like C’est le cadet de mes soucis
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?
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