It could also just be English if you only speak English.
- 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
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
We’re not here to fuck spiders
Borrowing this one
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
You’re mustard
English. It’s a good thing, means the person is awesome.
You’re mustard for teaching me this!
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.
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
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.
Kill two birds with one stone.Get two birds stoned at once. 😎Stone two birds with one hit.
“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.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. :)
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 🤔
“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
ikke bry deg, 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 ….»
Haha, ikke noe problem. Godt observert!
That’s such a cool phrase though
“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.
“Correo de las brujas” translates to “the witches’ mail” and means gossip or rumors. Kind of like “heard it through the grapevine” or a “a little birdie told me”
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 :)
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
前世害左你么？(In Cantonese/Taishanese)
Did I hurt you in your previous incarnation?
Parents always say this when they get mad.
I guess it translate to “What did I do in my previous life to deserve a shitty kid like you?”
So a round-about way of just saying trash-talking their kid basically.
I always respons, “So why did you hurt me in my my previous life?”
Or “Yea you hur me in my previous life and I reincarnated here for revenge” 🤣
(Who the fucked coined that phrase, why is reincarnation brought up wtf lol)
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
