It could also just be English if you only speak English.
There’s an expression in French, “enculage de mouches”. Literally means “fucking flies in the ass” and, figuratively, refers to being impossibly pedantic and nitpicky. Closest equivalent in English would be “splitting hairs” I think
Oh we got that here too “flue knepperi” fly fucking
In Egyptian arabic we have
The world is a cucumber one day it’s in your hand, the other it’s in your ass
(Kama todeen todaan) Literal translation: As you give debt, you will owe debt. Alternative is as you judge you will be judged. Basically what goes around comes around
Do you have a feather on your head? When some one asks for special treatment, this is usually a response to that. Feather on his head is a reference to the sultan.
We stayed quiet so he came in with his donkey. Or we let him be, so he came with his donkey The proverb means don’t let people walk all over you
Show me the width of your shoulders Something I heard a lot growing up, basically means go away. To show the width of your shoulders, you show your back, hence the expression
The first one is absolutely hilarious!
“Пиян като мотика”. Translates from Bulgarian to “Drunk as a mattock”. I remember asking my dad about this phrase when I was a kid - “Why? Do mattocks drink?” - and he answered “No, they fall down”. Classic dad.
A couple of figures of speech from Mexico that I find equally nonsensical:
Simón: Means yes.
Nelson: Means no.
Mátala(o) (kill it): to finish a drink or a snack.
Jalar (pull): To go somewhere or agree to a plan. You may also hear its long form “¿jalas o te pandeas?” (do you pull or do you bend?) meaning “are you coming or not?”.
¿Se va hacer o no se va a hacer la carnita asada? (Are we doing or not the carne asada?): It means “Is the plan still on?”
Chapulinear: There’s no literal translation for this one but I guess it would be like “grasshopper-ing”. It means seducing a friend’s partner.
Tirando el perro (throwing the dog): Flirting.
Arma la vaca (build the cow): Gathering money for a small collective purchase.
Huele a gas (Smells like gas): To leave. That’s kind of like an advanced figure of speech because it comes from Fuga, which in and of itself is a figure of speech meaning “to leave quickly”. It literally translates to “leak”, as in a gas line leak, because you’re supposed to leave in a way that mimics gas leaking from a pipe. So, when we need to leave but not as quickly, we don’t say “leak”, we say “smells like gas” implying there might be a leak.
Here’s a modern one:
Quesadilla: Means “that’s so sad” because it sounds like *Qué sad (illa)*tal
I knew a girl who tiraba el perro al novio de su amiga, so I guess she also was trying to chapulinear xD
Here’s one in Egyptian Arabic: “He who gets burnt by soup will blow on yoghurt”, meaning that someone who gets hurt once will bexome careful not to repeat the experience.
We have a similar one in Bulgarian too: “Парен каша духа” - roughly the same thing, but without explicitly mentioning youghurt.
There’s a very similar version in Spanish
El que con leche se quema, hasta al jocoque le sopla
He who gets burnt by milk will blow on jocoque
In French we have “a burned cat fear cold water” (chat échaudé craint l’eau froide)
I really like this! Getting burnt so bad that you’d blow on something cold like ice out of fear.
“Jeg bryr meg katta”
literally “I care like a cat”, meaning “I don’t care in the slightest and talking more about it is an insult to my time”.
It’s fallen mostly out of use, but I’m hanging on.
are you perchance Norwegian? jeg lærer norsk (faren min er norsk, det er teknisk sett andrespråket mitt men jeg bruker det ikke mye. nå jeg lærer mer)
hvis du er dansk, jeg beklager at forveksler de to, men hvis du er norsk, det er hyggelig å se folk som snakker språket
glem det, dansk bruker “mig”. jeg glemte
Haha, ikke noe problem. Godt observert!
Hehe. Selv om vi nordmenn er litt brutale i språket og ofte tolkes som uhøflige, så betyr «ikke bry deg» noe sånt som «mind your own business». «Glem det» (never mind) fungerer kanskje bedre.
tusen takk! jeg har hørt „nieważne” i polsk også, som betyr “det er ikke viktig”, og jeg tror at det er «неважно» med samme betydning
Muntlig ville jeg nok brukt det. «(det er) ikke så viktig, kom på at ….»
fra min forståelse, du kan si det når du sa noe, personen hørte det ikke.
«Co?» (Hva/Hæ?) «Nieważne» (Det er ikke viktig, glem det)
That’s such a cool phrase though
In colloquial English, you can say that someone is an idiot with the construction “you absolute [noun]” or “you complete [noun]” or similar.
It doesn’t actually matter what the noun is, but it works better the more obscure or specific the thing is. For example “you absolute saucepan”, “you complete hose pipe”, or my personal favourite “you absolute strawberry plant”.
In this line of thought I like how “tool” is something useful in its primary meaning, but derogatory when used about a person.
Sort of, there is a parallel derivation where tool can be an innuendo for penis (“used his tool”), so describing someone as a tool is a slightly less vulgar way of calling someone a dick; unrefined, rude, obnoxious.
Yeah, fair point. Thanks for explaining. Not a native speaker, so I kind of forgot about that.
No worries - I’m a native, but still had to think about it a bit. English is weird
One of my favorite youtubers Octavius King demonstrates this really well by using “complete and utter desk” as a derogatory term for the worst offenders to intellect.
I really like the german “Geburtstagskind”. It refers to a Person whose birthday is today but literally translates to “birthday child”. However you use it for any age. If its your grandfathers 80st birthday he still is the birthday child this day. Usually people just use the word without thinking about it , but i really like the idea that everyone can get childish again on their birthday. :)
Ukrainian “не лізь поперед батька в пекло” (“don’t rush to hell before your father”) - a mix of “don’t be foolish / try to prove yourself / hurt yourself doing so” and also “let experienced people do their job / lead”.
Also Ukrainian “або пан або пропав” (“Either [you become] a lord, or you disappear”), an important risky choice, or sometimes used as YOLO of yesteryear.
In Khmer, there’s a phrase “មិនដឹងខ្យល់” which literally translates to “Doesn’t know wind” as in they’re so dumb they don’t even know what wind is.
I guess it’s kind of like calling someone an air head but from a different angle.
C’est la vie. Because it is what it is.
- Flat out like a lizard drinking
- We’re not here to fuck spiders
- As dry as a dead dingo’s donger
- Forty cents short of a shout
- A few kangaroos loose in the top paddock
We’re not here to fuck spiders
Borrowing this one
What does we’re not here to fuck spiders refer to?
Besides the literal
It implies we are here to do something more productive than fucking spiders
Two that are related to falling
猿も木から落ちる [Even] monkeys fall out of trees [too]. Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you’ll always get it right.
七転び八起き Fall down 7 times, get up 8. Pretty self-explanatory
Fall down 7 times, get up 8.
But you’ll have to fall down an 8th time if you want to get up again 🤔
“I have to see a man about a horse.”
It means you’re going to the bathroom.
I’ve heard the size of the animal denotes how long they will take and/or how urgently they need to leave.
Brb, I gotta go take a Brontosaurus.
I’ve always heard this used to mean “I’ve gotta leave quickly” rather than going to bathroom; but I’m British so it might not hold the same meaning of you’re not also!
I don’t speak German, but I picked up a few phrases for work. They have a few idioms that I think of sometimes:
“Ich glaub, ich spinne” which means I think I’m crazy, but literally translates to “I think, I spider.” It’s a great visual metaphor, being overwhelmed by the threads going everywhere that you imagine you’re a spider spinning a web, and also you’ve entirely forgotten grammar.
“Bahnhof verstehen” or “Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof” means “I understand only the train station.” It’s something you say when you don’t understand anything, you’re completely lost, and you don’t give a shit becaue you just want to get the fuck home.
I might be off on those translations or the subtext, but that’s how I understood it.
and also you’ve entirely forgotten grammar.
That’s a misinterpretation. The German “spinne” is a proper verb in that sentence, like “to spin” in English.
So it can be what a spider does, but also what political doctors do, and the latter is the context here?
The “Bahnhof verstehen” comes from the notion that many people learning a foreign language start with some simple sentences like “Can you tell me the way to the train station”. So people who only “Bahnhof verstehen” (OK, horrible grammar here) have not proceed past the first lesson.
My understanding is that is came from soldiers returning from WWI who did not speak enough German to communicate, but were seeking the trains home.
Not fluent at all, but I always parsed “Ich glaub, ich spinne” as “I feel like my head is spinning”
No, it’s not “spin” like a top or top be dizzy. There’s a bunch of meanings, and some are similar to those two, but none fit for dizzy.
“Head is spinning” is a metaphor. Literally tanslating metaphors doesn’t usually work, which is why this thread is interesting
