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Pulling faces

The Arabic sabaha bi-wajhi means to begin the day by seeing someone’s face. Depending on their expression, this can be a good or bad omen:

sgean (Scottish Gaelic) a wild look of fear on the face

kao kara hi ga deru (Japanese) a blush (literally, a flame comes out of one’s face)

verheult (German) puffy-faced and red-eyed from crying

Backpfeifengesicht (German) a face that cries out for a fist in it

Greek face-slapping

There are several vivid Greek words for being slapped in the face, including sfaliara, hastouki, fappa, xestrefti, boufla, karpasia and sulta’meremet (‘the Sultan will put you right’). Batsos means both ‘a slap in the face’ and ‘a policeman’ (from the American use of the word ‘cop’ to mean ‘swipe’). Anapothi describes a backhanded slap, while tha fas bouketo, ‘you will eat a bunch of flowers’, is very definitely not an invitation to an unusual meal.

Windows of the soul

Eyes can be our most revealing feature, though the way others see them may not always be quite what we’d hoped for:

makahakahaka (Hawaiian) deep-set eyeballs

mata ego (Rapa Nui, Easter Island) eyes that reveal that a person has been crying

ablaq-chashm (Persian) having intensely black and white eyes

jegil (Malay) to stare with bulging eyes

melotot (Indonesian) to stare in annoyance with widened eyes

All ears

English is not terribly helpful when it comes to characterizing ears, unlike, say, Albanian, in which people distinguish between veshok (‘small ones’) or veshak (‘ones that stick out’). Other languages are similarly versatile:

tapawising (Ulwa, Nicaragua) pointed ears

a suentola (Italian) flappy ears

mboboyo (Bemba, Congo and Zambia) sore ears

Indonesian offers two useful verbs: nylentik, ‘to flick someone with the middle finger on the ear’, and menjewer, ‘to pull someone by the ear’. While the Russian for ‘to pull someone’s leg’ is veshat’ lapshu na ushi, which literally translates as ‘to hang noodles on someone’s ears’.

A real mouthful

In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs which is still spoken today in Mexico, camachaloa is ‘to open one’s mouth’, camapaca is ‘to wash one’s mouth’, and camapotoniliztli is ‘to have bad breath’.

Getting lippy

Lips can be surprisingly communicative:

zunda (Hausa, Nigeria) to indicate with one’s lips

catkhara (Hindi) smacking either the lips or the tongue against the palate

die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen (German) to stick one’s lower lip out sulkily (literally, to play the insulted liver sausage)

ho’oauwaepu’u (Hawaiian) to stick the tongue under one’s lip or to jut out the chin and twist the lips to the side to form a lump (as a gesture of contempt)

Hooter

Noses are highly metaphorical. We win by a nose, queue nose to tail or ask people to keep their noses out of our business. Then, if they are annoying us, it’s that same protuberant feature we seize on:

irgham (Persian) rubbing a man’s nose in the dirt

hundekuq (Albanian) a bulbous nose, red at the tip

nuru (Roviana, Solomon Islands) a runny nose

engsang (Malay) to blow the nose with your fingers

ufuruk (Turkish) breath exhaled through the nose

Albanian face fungus

Just below the nose may be found a feature increasingly rare in this country, but popular amongst males in many other societies. In Albania the language reflects an interest bordering on obsession, with no fewer than twenty-seven separate expressions for this fine addition to the upper lip. Their word for moustache is similar to ours (mustaqe) but once attached to their highly specific adjectives, things move on to a whole new level:

madh bushy moustache

holl thin moustache

varur drooping moustache

big handlebar moustache

kacadre moustache with turned-up ends

glemb moustache with tapered tips

posht moustache hanging down at the ends

fshes long broom-like moustache with bristly hairs

dirs ur newly sprouted moustache (of an adolescent)

rruar with the moustache shaved off

… to name but ten. The attention the Albanians apply