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dar patadas de ahogado (Latin American Spanish) to fight a losing battle (literally, to thrash around uselessly when you’ll drown anyway)

aleteo (Caribbean Spanish) the last words in a lost argument (literally, flapping of wings)

IDIOMS OF THE WORLD

The pot calling the kettle black

c’est l’hôpital qui se moque de la Charité (French) it’s the hospital that mocks Charity

bagoly mondja a verébnek, hogy nagyfejű (Hungarian) the owl calls the sparrow big-headed

rugala se sova sjenici (Croatian) the owl mocked the tit

il bue che dice cornuto all’asino (Italian) the ox saying ‘horned’ to the donkey

rîde ciob de oală spartă (Romanian) the splinter laughs at the broken pot

al jamal ma yishuf sanamu (Arabic) the camel cannot see its own hump

ein Esel schimpft den anderen Langohr (German) a donkey gets cross with a rabbit

6.

The Rules of Attraction

a tola e à lettu alcunu rispettu (Corsican)

have no respect at the table and in bed

The Russian word for falling in love, oupast’, also means to be at a loss, to understand nothing. Other languages stress the magic of the early stages of the romantic encounter:

koi no yokan (Japanese) a sense on first meeting that something is going to evolve into love

ong buóm (Vietnamese) bees and butterflies, flirtations, love-making

anhimmeln (German) to look enraptured at someone (literally, as if they were the sky)

No-pan kissa

On summer evenings, in little towns in Italy, young men and women fare la passeggiata, perambulating the central square sizing each other up and flirting, or, as they say in that country, fare il galletto, to do like the rooster. Other societies offer other options:

blyazh (Russian) a beach where girls can be picked up

kamáki (Greek) the young local guys strolling up and down beaches hunting for female tourists (literally, harpoons)

no-pan kissa (Japanese) coffee shops with mirrored floors to allow customers to look up waitresses’ skirts

tyčovka (Czech) a woman who hangs on to the pole next to the bus driver and chats him up

Like a motorway

In Indonesia, they have a word for falling in love at first sight: kepincut. But when it comes to what’s most attractive in a woman, there seems to be no accounting for tastes:

rombhoru (Bengali) a woman having thighs as well-shaped as banana trees

autostrada (Italian) a very slender girl without pronounced sexual attributes (literally, a motorway)

e thamba (Oshindonga, Namibia) a big, fat and clean girl

baffona (Italian) an attractive moustachioed woman

at have både til gården og til gaden (Danish) a woman well equipped both at the front and the rear (literally, to have both to the courtyard and to the street)

Double take

Certainly, caution is advised in the early stages:

layogenic (Tagalog, Philippines) someone good-looking from afar but not up close

daburu bikkuri (Japanese) women who, as they are approaching a stall, look so attractive that they give the vendor a shock, but when they finally arrive at his counter they give him another shock as the scales fall from his eyes (literally, double shock)

A face only a mother could love

And one should always be wary of a blind date:

kakobijin (Japanese) the sort of woman who talks incessantly about how she would have been thought of as a stunner if she had lived in a different era, when men’s tastes in women were different (literally, bygone beauty)

kimangamanga (Gilbertese, Oceania) a person with a ridiculous walk and defective bottom

sjøstygg (Norwegian) being so ugly that the tide won’t come in if you’re on the shore (literally, sea ugly)

skreeulelik (Afrikaans) scream ugly (i.e. so frightening as to make the viewer scream)

être moche à caler des roués de corbillard (French) to be extremely ugly (literally, to be ugly enough to stop the wheels of a hearse)

Diving fish, swooping geese

In China, many hundreds of years ago, a poet said of the great beauty Hsi Chi that when she went for a walk fish dived deeper, geese swooped off their course, and deer ran