Word of the day is always fun. I see this one used in accounting frequently.

This use here is spot on, but not common.

I like uses like this one. Gives a bit of texture to the conversation.

Arrears is derived from an old French word that literally just means behind. I've seen it used in English with that meaning in ways that are more generic than specifically referring to payments.

"in arrears" is derived from "en arrière" which is still used in modern French. Like most French words, it evolved from Latin: ad retro.

In modern French, it's used both literally and figuratively. A common folk song goes "3 pas en arrière…" (3 steps backward). Similarly, "arriérés" could mean "people with retrograde mindsets", or "arrears", i.e. rent or taxes that should have already been paid. I suppose the English language merged "arriérés" and "arrière" into a single word.

It's very common in English in accounting.

I made another comment and just updated it, that delves a lot deeper into this topic than it really deserves, but here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23326438

Yep, e.g. la porte en arrière = the back door. Handy that the English word has "rear" right there in it. And in case this comment doesn't sound snickery/sexual enough yet, there's also derrière (butt or rear end).

Please excuse me as I'll be a tad fussy. You're welcome to pay me back in my own coin with my approximative English.

The right expression is la porte arrière (not "en arrière"), which usually means the back door of a vehicle. Some will more correctly say la portière arrière. It will rarely endorse the other meaning of "back door". Out of context, absolutely no one would see anything sexual in this expression.

On the other hand, la porte de derrière will point to the door which is on the back side, for instance the back door of a house. In some contexts, it may convey some sexual innuendo.

Interesting! I would say “la porte de derrière" and never heard "la porte en arrière". Can I ask where you’re from?

I'd personally say "la porte arrière" for the rear door of a car but "la porte de derrière" for the rear door of a house for instance. I think the distinction is that on a car both sets of doors are side-by-side whereas in a house they're in opposition to one-another. That's my France's French take at least.

"la porte en arriere" or "la porte d'en arriere" sounds French-Canadian.

Well how about that - today I learned people outside Canada don't say it the same way!

Hold on, does the "de" in derrière mean "the" as in "the rear"?

No, "de" is a preposition -- "of the rear"

FWIW I grew up in Alabama in the 90’s and this expression was not uncommon. Often used to express late child-support payments.

Right, but that's the usage I was familiar with: having some debt that you are behind on paying. The parent was using it to mean "performing worse than a competitor", which is distinct.

I guess I use words pretty liberally, but I don't see much of a distinction -- especially when you look at the etymology: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arrear

It comes from "to the rear". So, in a competition (against Airbus), it means you're behind the person in first. On a payment schedule, it means you're behind the schedule.

Right but it seemed like it didn't work metaphorically because a pretty important part of the definition -- something present every time I saw the term used -- is that you're in debt to someone else, usually with the connotation of them being able to take the collateralized asset. Yet there was no sense in which that relationship would apply to Boeing and Airbus.

Every other time someone was behind, they were just "behind" -- never saw that prompt the use of a legalistic French term the way that "being in arrears" did.

Edit: O...kay, getting some pushback on this. Let me try to explain with another analogy.

Let's say I saw a comment that read, "He got involved in human trafficking because he has a mortgage."

I had only ever seen "mortgage" used to referred to a secured loan for a home.

So I'd interpret the statement to mean, "he has a big debt he wants to pay and needs money and that motivated him to do slimy things for it."

But let's further say I had specific knowledge that that guy had paid off his home loan years ago. Then I'd be confused and say so, "uh, what? He doesn't even have a mortgage."

Then a bunch of people respond to say, "oh, duh, 'mortgage' comes from the French 'death pledge'[1] -- here they were talking about how he had pledged his life to serve the cartels on pain of death." "Oh, yeah, man, I use 'mortgage' all the time to refer to a blood oath."

That ... would definitely be news to me. Sure -- I wasn't aware of people who had used it the other way. But do you see why I would never have abstracted "mortgage" to refer to death pledges in general, even with great abstraction skills?

Note: "Mortgage", to my knowledge, is not used in English in this other way -- I'm just conveying the sense of surprise there to learn that, had it actually been true.

[1] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/mortgage

For what little it's worth, I had the same reaction as SilasX here; I've just never encountered this usage before, only the "in debt"/"late payment" usage.

I have seen it used very commonly for failing or not completing courses due, in higher education, in some parts of the world

I'm slightly surprised to see that this definition is considered obscure. Perhaps I've been disproportionately exposed to it through my slight obsession with motor-racing :-) Having said that, Boeing's situation is closer to the first definition of 'debt' than you might imagine, if you consider the idea of 'technical debt', a concept that (at least in a software context) most of the HN crowd will be familiar with. The 737 is in a recognisable state of technical debt - if it were a software product, its innards would be written in FORTRAN.

That's funny. I was aware of the secondary usage, but not the primary.