Literal translation
to be well tired
Meaning
to be utterly exhausted
Explanation
In Provençal, fatiga does not mean simple tiredness. La fatigo means heavy worry or gruelling labor, and èstre fatiga means being harassed or worked like a slave. Add bèn, and the phrase tips into being at death's door. It works as a barely veiled euphemism for announcing, with a sad grimace, that someone is gravely ill. If told the neighbor is bien fatiguée, it does not mean she needs sleep, it means she is fading. The expression kept this sense when it slipped into regional French.