I Never Knew There Was a Word for It - Adam Jacot De Boinod [104]
naffata (Arabic) a woman who spits on the knots (in exercising a form of Arabian witchcraft in which women tie knots in a cord and spit upon them with an imprecation)
The crystal ball
You might think that the advice of spirits and gods would be enough to comfort and direct humankind, but not a bit of it. We are so desperate to know what the future holds for us that almost anything will do:
fakane (Bugotu, Solomon Islands) to divine, using a broken coconut shell
koffiedik kijken (Dutch) reading tea leaves, predicting the future (literally, coffee-grounds-looking)
ber-dreymr (Old Icelandic) having clear dreams as to the future
lowa (Setswana, Botswana) a particular pattern in which a diviner’s bones have fallen
onnevalamine (Estonian) telling one’s fortune by pouring molten lead into cold water (on New Year’s Eve)
chichiri-wiirik (Buli, Ghana) a man who can call on fairies to reveal things to him; a type of diviner
vayasa mutírtsu (Telugu, India) a crow crossing from the left side to the right (which Hindus consider a good omen)
Fringed with noodles
We all hope things will turn out well but there are all kinds of superstitions that wishing each other good luck might bring its reverse. When someone in Norway goes fishing, he is wished skitt fiske, lousy fishing.
German has two expressions for being lucky: Schwein haben, to have a pig – as a pig symbolizes good luck and lots of sausages; and Sott haben, to have soot – because, according to folklore, touching a chimney sweep brings luck. The French describe someone who is incredibly lucky as il a le cul bordé de nouilles, literally, his arse is fringed with noodles.
IDIOMS OF THE WORLD
When pigs fly
na kukovo ljato (Bulgarian) in a cuckoo summer
kad na vrbi rodi grože (Croatian) when willows bear grapes
når der er to torsdage i en uge (Danish) when a week has two Thursdays
quand les poules auront des dents (French) when hens have teeth
am Sankt Nimmerleinstag (German) on St Never-ever-day
majd ha piros hó esik (Hungarian) when it’s snowing red snowflakes
quando Pasqua viene a maggio (Italian) when Easter falls in May
tuyaning dumi yerga tekkanda (Uzbek) when the camel’s tail reaches the ground
când o fi bunica fată mare (Romanian) when my grandma will be a virgin again
kag-da rak svist-nyet (Russian) when the crayfish whistles
balik ağaca / kavağa çikinca (Turkish) when fish climb trees/poplar trees
cuando las ranas críen pelos (Spanish) when frogs grow hair
The Wonder of Whiffling
CLATTERFARTS
AND JAISIES
Getting acquainted
Great talkers should be crop’d,
for they have no need of ears
(Franklin: Poor Richard’s Almanack 1738)
Once upon a time, your first contact with someone was likely to be face to face. These days you’re as likely to get together via the computer:
floodgaters people who send you email inquiries and, after receiving any kind of response, begin swamping you with multiple messages of little or no interest
digerati those who have, or claim to have, expertise in computers or the Internet
disemvowel to remove the vowels from a word in an email, text message, etc, to abbreviate it
bitslag all the useless rubble one must plough through on the Net to get to the rich information ore
ham legitimate email messages (as opposed to spam)
DOG AND BONE
Possibly the most used English word of greeting – hello – only came into common usage with the arrival of the telephone. Its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, felt that the usual Victorian greeting of ‘How do you do?’ was too long and old-fashioned for his new device. He suggested the sailor’s cry ahoy! as the best way to answer his machine and operators at the first exchange did just that. But ahoy! didn’t prove popular because it felt too abrupt. Compromise was soon reached with hello!, a word that came straight from the hunting-field. But could Bell ever have foreseen some of the ways in which his device would come to be used?
Hollywood