• pruwyben
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    416 days ago

    So apparently the entire world decided that “pee the bed” would be a great name for a flower.

    • @[email protected]
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      216 days ago

      The Scottish people I’ve heard say it actually called them “piss-a-beds,” which trips off the tongue a lot easier, but that name comes from the fact that as an herbal medicine they are apparently a pretty effective diuretic.

    • @[email protected]
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      416 days ago

      Well it has a strong diuretic effect. It’s just good marketing, you know what plant to get off you have trouble pissing

  • @[email protected]
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    315 days ago

    Oooh, so that’s what the title of the song “Itchycoo Park” means. I used to think it was an awful sexual reference.

  • @[email protected]
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    215 days ago

    On a second thought, the dandelion’s Hungarian name ‘child’s chain grass’ is pretty reserved.

        • @[email protected]
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          114 days ago

          I did, sometimes, as a child. We called them pissenlit et dandelion, both pronounced in French.

          I grew up speaking both English and French though.

      • @[email protected]
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        115 days ago

        Yeah that’s what I meant, around here everyone calls them pissenlit, hence piss the bed.

    • Malgas
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      015 days ago

      Ironic, given that the English “dandelion” was borrowed from the Old French dent de leon (“lion’s tooth”).

    • @[email protected]
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      516 days ago

      Well, childhood mystery solved. When I was younger, my family went to France to visit some relatives. One of the dishes we were served was a salad, and my mom told me it was called pee-the-bed salad. I was so confused and was terrified that I was going to wet my bed that night after eating it. I didn’t, but I had been wondering ever since then what it could have been and why it was called that.

    • The Bard in Green
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      216 days ago

      I always thought it was a “Dandy Lion,” like a fancy Victorian gentleman lion.

      Also

      “Uhuhuh… you thaid blow balls.”

      “Yeah! Heheh! Yeah!”

  • @[email protected]
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    18
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    16 days ago

    Dandelion is called pee the bed (piscialetto) in Italian too. Other Italian names for the same plant are:

    • Dog pisser (pisciacane)
    • Dog tooth (dente di cane)
    • Little grandpa (nonnino)
    • wild chicory (cicoria selvatica)
    • Donkey chicory (cicoria asinina)
    • Pork snout (grugno di porco)
    • Pork fattener (ingrassaporci)
    • Eye stinger (brusaoci, Venetian)
    • Pig salad (insalata di porci. No, not pork salad, pig salad, the animals are still alive)
    • Pork grass (erba del porco)
    • Sunflower of meadows (girasole dei prati)
    • Lion tooth (dente di leone)
    • Big puff (soffione, only the fruit)

    I think the last two are the most common

    • loaExMachina [any]
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      116 days ago

      In French it’s also called “pissenlit”, which can be translated the same way if split as " pisse en lit". But although I’d noticed this as a kid, I always thought of it as a joke and assumed the name couldn’t actually come from that…

    • @[email protected]
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      116 days ago

      Wait, I don’t speak Italian, is the meaning of porci in ingrassaporci being pork and porci in insalata di porci being pig distinguished by the lack of preposition and the formation of a compound word or is it just a known thing?