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Beyond the legal definition of la pénibilité (which shares a root with « pain » and captures the English ideas of both hazardousness and arduousness) adopted and incorporated into the « account for the prevention of hazardous and arduous working conditions » ( Compte personnel de prévention de la pénibilité –C3P) introduced in 2010, collective efforts to define the concept have already eliminated several incorrect applications. Those efforts need to be pursued, however, which is what this article sets out to do. It was inevitable that the term would generate a variety of meanings, and in some cases misunderstandings, given the connection it introduces between occupational health and pension policy. We can nevertheless identify three key meanings: a probabilistic approach to long-term health risks (which this article only briefly touches on, since the account for hazardous and arduous working conditions, and therefore the bulk of the present issue, are devoted to this); « hazardous and arduous working conditions due to current health » where diminished health (whether due or not to prior occupational exposures) makes the demands of a job hard to bear or unbearable; and « hazardous or arduous working conditions due to current work », which may be experienced even by workers in good health if a job is perceived as a source of vexation, fatigue, or pain, equal to or greater than the satisfaction it provides, i.e. when a job is experienced as « painful » in the literal sense. This article seeks to synthesise knowledge from various disciplines in order to define these meanings, particularly the latter two. Insights are then made as to potential actions, which can be grouped under the theme of « bearability ».