Idioms: position and the next move

The third entry is garder sous le boisseau, and the vessel inside it is one English owns as well. Le boisseau was an old dry measure for grain and the wooden container that held it, which is exactly what a « bushel » was on this side of the Channel. Both languages took the image from the same verse, where a lamp is not lit in order to be put sub modio, under the measuring vessel. What each did with it afterwards is the whole difference. English kept one sentence and one subject, because « to hide one’s light under a bushel » is said of a person who will not let a talent be seen, and the phrase is almost always about modesty. French let the vessel cover things instead of gifts. Mettre une affaire sous le boisseau, garder un rapport sous le boisseau, l’enquête est restée sous le boisseau — what lies underneath is a document, a finding, a matter somebody preferred unread, and no modesty comes into it at all. So the trap is not the word but the object: put a talent under the French bushel and the sentence has become a cover-up.