I Never Knew There Was a Word for It - Adam Jacot De Boinod [8]
Bearded wonder
The Arab exclamation ‘God protect us from hairy women and beardless men’ pinpoints the importance of facial hair as a mark of rank, experience and attractiveness:
gras bilong fes (Tok Pisin, Papua New Guinea) a beard (literally, grass belonging to the face)
hemigeneios (Ancient Greek) with only half a beard
qarba (Persian) white hairs appearing in the beard
sim-zanakh (Persian) with a silver chin
poti (Tulu, India) a woman with a beard
False friends
willing (Abowakal, Australia) lips
buzz (Arabic) nipple
bash (Zulu) head
thumb (Albanian) teat
finger (Yiddish) toe
Bad hair day
Hair on the top of the head – or the lack of it – remains a worldwide preoccupation:
basribis (Ulwa, Nicaragua) having uneven, poorly cut hair
daberlack (Ullans, Northern Ireland) seaweed or uncontrollable long hair
kudpalu (Tulu, India) a woman with uncombed hair
kucir (Indonesian) a tuft left to grow on top of one’s otherwise bald head
… not forgetting the Indonesian word didis, which means ‘to search and pick up lice from one’s own hair, usually when in bed at night’.
Teething troubles
Why doesn’t English have an expression for the space between the teeth when Malay does – gigi rongak? And that’s not the only gap in our dental vocabulary:
mrongos (Indonesian) to have ugly protruding upper teeth
angil (Kapampangan, Philippines) to bare the fangs like a dog
laglerolarpok (Inuit) the gnashing of teeth
kashr (Persian) displaying the teeth in laughter
zhaghzhagh (Persian) the chattering of the teeth from the cold or from rage
And that one bizarre word that few of us are ever likely to need:
puccekuli (Tulu, India) a tooth growing after the eightieth year
Getting it in the neck
Although there are straightforward terms for the throat in almost all languages, it’s when it comes to describing how the throat is used that things get interesting:
nwik-ga (Wagiman, Australia) to have a tickle in the throat
ngaobera (Pascuense, Easter Island) a slight inflammation of the throat caused by screaming too much
berdaham (Malaysian) to clear the throat, especially to attract attention
kökochöka (Nahuatl, Mexico) to make gulping sounds
jarida biriqihi (Arabic) he choked on but couldn’t swallow saliva (from excitement, alarm or grief)
o ka la nokonoko (Hawaiian) a day spent in nervous anticipation of a coughing spell
Armless in Nicaragua
In Ulwa, which is spoken in the eastern part of Nicaragua, no distinction is made between certain parts of the body. So, for example, wau means either a thigh or a leg, ting is an arm or a hand (and tingdak means missing an arm or a hand), tingmak is a finger or a thumb, tibur is either a wrist or an ankle, and kungbas means a beard, a moustache or whiskers.
Safe pair of hands
Other languages are more specific about our extremities and their uses:
sakarlasmak (Turkish) to become butterfingered
lutuka (Tulu, India) the cracking of the fingers
angushti za’id (Persian) someone with six fingers
zastrich’ (Russian) to cut one’s nails too short
meshetmek (Turkish) to wipe with the wet palm of one’s hand
anjali (Hindi) hollowed hands pressed together in salutation
Legging it
Undue attention is put on their shapeliness but the bottom line is it’s good to have two of them and they should, ideally, be the same length:
papakata (Cook Islands Maori) to have one leg shorter than the other
baguettes (French) thin legs (literally, chopsticks or long thin French loaves)
x-bene (Afrikaans) knock-knees
bulurin-suq (Persian) with thighs like crystal
Footloose
We don’t always manage to put our best one forward:
zassledit’ (Russian) to leave dirty footmarks
mencak-mencak (Indonesian)