Literal translation
to press the anchovy
Meaning
to be poor, short of food
Explanation
This expression means to be poor, short of food, and describes a material hardship that settles in and lasts. The literal image comes from salted anchovy, a cheap staple on modest tables of the Provençal coast: to press it is to squeeze out every last drop of brine or flesh, an extreme gesture of thrift symbolising making the most of very little. To press the anchovy thus means living hand to mouth, with no reserve, in a poverty that forces one to waste nothing of the bare essentials. The register is familiar and mildly figurative, used with a certain discretion to describe, without stating it bluntly, someone's or one's own difficult financial situation. It sits alongside other Provençal expressions built on humble foodstuffs, the anchovy holding in local imagination a place comparable to sardine or cod elsewhere on the Mediterranean coast. The verb quicha also carries the senses of compressing, squeezing, insisting, which reinforces the idea of a constant effort simply to get by.