It could also just be English if you only speak English.
“Das geht mir am Arsch vorbei.”
German for I don’t give a damn about that.
Literally: it passes by my ass.
You can also lift it up to a SFW level by saying “Das geht mir hinten vorbei.” (It passes behind me), or strengthen it with “Das geht mir weit hinten vorbei.” (It passes far behind me).
Or, if you wanna sound intellectual: „Das tangiert mich peripher.“
“Lukee kuin piru Raamattua” (Finnish).
Literally “to read like the Devil reads the Bible”.
Meaning to examine something in bad faith. Never heard it used it in context of the Bible or anything religious, but eg. when interpreting law or contract, looking for the details that could be twisted for your purpose, rather than what the text attempts to convey.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)
I knew a girl who tiraba el perro al novio de su amiga, so I guess she also was trying to chapulinear xD
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.
Esperanto
krokodili- verb, literally something like “to crocodile”
It means when an Esperanto-speaker speaks in a language other than Esperanto while amongst other Esperanto-speakers.
No one’s quite sure why that’s the term for it, most likely because crocodiles have a big mouth.
When I learned that, it suddenly made a lot of sense why Duolingo taught me the word for “crocodile” so early.
Are there really esperato speakers in the wild (not just Duolingo?) It would be a fun language to learn, but if no one speaks i’d rather just get better at german :)
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. :)
“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
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)
Haha, ikke noe problem. Godt observert!
That’s such a cool phrase though
- 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
“I have to see a man about a horse.”
It means you’re going to the bathroom.
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’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.
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.
When I was young, myself and a group of friends were being accosted by a disheveled man on our walk home from the bar. We didn’t really understand what he was saying, but we were able to discern one phrase, as he told us to “Put the pussy on a chain wax”
We had no idea what it meant, and thought it was hilarious, so we’d oft repeat it at random.
Thinking about it now, I suddenly realize what he meant. He was referring to the woman in our group, telling us to pimp her out, by putting her up against a chain-link fence that were so plentiful in rough neighborhoods where we grew up.
So now I’m telling you, so that if you ever encounter this gentleman, you’ll know what he’s talking about 😶👍
If you ever see that guy, you better draxx them sclounce!
“Butt fuck Egypt (BFE),” when referring to being in the middle of nowhere or the far edges of a parking area. For example, Sally complained to her friend in the food court, “I had to park all the way in BFE. I’m dreading the walk back to the car.”
Nice. In German we have “am Arsch der Welt”, lit. translating to “at the arse of the world” to refer to the middle of nowhere
In portuguese, we also like to say “where Judas lost his boots”
English has “the arse end of nowhere” too. Wir sind alle gleich.
That’s actually quite an interestingly accurate one, considering that something like 95% of Egyptians live near the Nile River, and anywhere that is NOT near the Nile is desert wasteland.
Other accurate analogies would be anywhere in Canada that is NOT near its’ southern border, or nearly anywhere/everywhere in inland Australia, they call it the Outback for a reason.
Bruh where is this?
Growing up in the Midwest, I’ve heard BFE countless times.
We use “bum fuck nowhere” in Michigan, at least in my experience.
New England, at least. BFE is half the state of Maine, but also the furthest spots in the Hannaford parking lot.
Why Egypt specifically? I’ve heard the phrase bumfuck nowhere before.
I think it’s just a reference to being very far away from the speaker’s main area of residence. Plus it just rolls off the tongue delightfully.
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”.
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.
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
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An example as if I was talking to you: “I’ll wack you like an octopus” which technically already describes the action, however traditionally in my country after catching octopus in order to properly kill them and soften them up, fishermen basically smack/wacked them on the ground maniacally.
And I think it’s become such a popular figure of speech because that mental image is hilarious and I love using it.
What language is that in, English? :)
Greek
Βεβαίως
Ποια άλλη να’ ταν;
