121 Responses to “13 words not found in the English language”

1. Journeywoman Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 2:30 am

   1 GREAT list. I didn’t know there was a word for the funny remark that hits you later.

2. WFM Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 2:46 am

   2 Well this was certainly entertaining since I knew NONE of them. I just have to work Litost into a conversation someday soon!

3. damozel Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 2:51 am

   3 That is an EXCELLENT t-13. I submitted it to Stumble Upon. Also love your Halloween greetings (evil cackle)

4. damozel Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 2:53 am

   4 I don’t know if my previous comment “took,” but I submitted this excellent list to StumbleUpon. Love the evil halloween cackles too….

5. MommyBa Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 3:15 am

   5 We have a word in Filipino : duwende, and that means a dwarf - a mythical being of the underworld which may be white or black in color. Cool stuff you have here! I like it! Thanks for the info Happy Thursday!

6. colleen Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 3:16 am

   6 Number 11 could also be “Kramer.” I found this very interesting and love your blog city.

7. Raggedy Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 3:33 am

   7 I really liked your list! Terrific Thursday Thirteen! My TT is posted. Have a wonderful day! Happy TT’ing! *^_^ (=’:'=) (”)_ (”)� Raggedy

8. Anuahs Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 3:37 am

   8 For ten, “inquisitive” seems close enough.

9. On a Limb with Claudia Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 3:46 am

   9 Great list, as usual! What have you heard the most? Sorry, I’m a bit of a Pochemuchka! Happy TT!

10. Nicholas Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 4:47 am

    10 Great list, PJ. Some of those are definitley worth importing into English.

11. SJ Reidhead Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 4:55 am

    11 Excellent!

12. Capt Phat Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 7:05 am

    12 “Kabakabu” Yiddish for the sound of milk or other thick liquid pouring in a cup. I love that this is a eord It is also possible my mother was just pulling my leg.

13. Gattina Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 8:11 am

    13 Besides Waldeinsamkeit and Esprit de l�escalier I am unable to check anything, lol ! But why should these words be part of the English language ??

14. Tilly Greene Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 10:34 am

    14 Hmmm, Ilunga…what an interesting concept. Great list - thank you for sharing!

15. marcia v Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 6:03 pm

    15 words are my play thins so this was fun

16. PJ Posted: Nov 1st, 2007 at 9:24 pm

    16 Author Comment Hi all, thanks for commenting. Damozel: thanks for the stumble. MommyBa: duwendes sound very cute Colleen: yep, Kramer is quite the borrower! Anuahs: sure, but we don’t have a noun to describe that person. Gattina: it’s not the words themselves, but the fact that the English language doesn’t have equivalent words for the same concepts which is interesting to me.

17. Susan Helene Gottfried Posted: Nov 2nd, 2007 at 5:09 pm

    17 Cool! Wouldn’t it be cool if we all adopted these words/phrases into our daily language? We’d be multilingual before too long. What a cool idea!

18. china blue Posted: Nov 3rd, 2007 at 3:49 pm

    18 Great list! I was also thinking that some words can be shoehorned into our language - after all, some English words are used in other languages when a suitable equivalent can’t be found. ‘Le weekend’, anyone?

19. eviastarroy Posted: May 17th, 2008 at 11:33 pm

    19 I enjoyed this list! But why number 12? The other things are perhaps frequent occurrences, but I’m not really certain that one would have much relevant usage in the English language today!

20. PJ Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 12:03 am

    20 Author Comment It’s more about concepts which are particular to a certain culture, like the adage about Eskimos having a hundred words for snow.

21. sQueeky Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 3:58 am

    21 Someone once told me about ‘yoko meshi’ in Canada, but for the 3 years I have lived in Japan, I have never come across anyone who knows that expression. It might be from a certain city though, since there is a lot of local linguistic variation. Two interesting ones from Japan, however: ‘tattemae’, the face you show in public ‘honne’, your true being, which you show in private Great post!

22. philosp Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 4:17 am

    22 The Filipino ‘duwende’ sounds like a Goblin to me… There is a delicious Brazilian indigenous word to which I never found an equivalent in any other language: Cafun�, the act of striking one’s hair affectionately. The sort of thing you would do to a cat to make it purr…

23. Cj Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 4:40 am

    23 well guanxi is a relationship. A word in mandarin i would say does not translate is Yi, which is like. Brotherhood. Or like. Chivalry. But not really towards woman but just like..well it doens’t really translate. Online translators says it’s justice but that’s just a part of it. Have fun figuring it out

24. Bill Vincent Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 6:10 am

    24 The German one doesn’t really count IMO…Waldeinsamkeit is, literally, “forest aloneness”. A compound, largely made-up word. Another example of this would be “frischluftfanatiker”, meaning a person who enjoys fresh air a great deal. You could stick any handful of German words together, making a compound word that few Germans would use, most would scoff at as child’s play, but you could accurately say there is no English equivalent. Think about Fahrvergnugen! lit: “travel happiness”. Few Germans would have used that word before the VW ad blitz. It just sounds silly. For the record, yes, I speak German:) Despite my critique, I enjoyed the post.

25. Bill Vincent Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 6:12 am

    25 philosp: “Petting”???

26. John Rouse Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 8:05 am

    26 Great list - Swedes have a very good one “lagom” which is “not too much, not too little” and works out as a philosophy of life: how’s work? “lagom” and so on… very golden mean, and does a lot to explain Swedish society.

27. Seth Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 8:37 am

    27 Number 5 isn’t so much a word as it is a phrase- the spirit of the staircase- but I still think it’s neat that there’s a specific phrase for referring to that feeling. And actually, no, the Eskimo don’t really have a hundred words for snow. Most Eskimo languages are like the German example- you can smush other words together into infinite compound words- and English has more words for snow than most people realize. I think the concept of language shaping culture (and vice versa) is still valid, but the Eskimo-words-for-snow example is vastly exaggerated.

28. John Smith Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am

    28 I’ve seen similar to this before somewhere else. What is so special about it?

29. richg Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    29 Who would have known the we don’t have a word for “a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain” It seems like that one would be so useful.

30. PJ Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

    30 Author Comment Thanks for all your comments, I’m not sure how you all found this old post of mine from 2007. I made this list based on various sources, and without knowing those languages personally it would be difficult for me to really know how accurate they are. Thanks to everyone who gave explanations, critiques or additional words/concepts which aren’t found in Western culture. John Smith: I don’t know really, I posted this last year, and I guess that someone came across it and stumbled it? It’s just a fun list, that’s all. Seth: you’ll notice that I mentioned the “adage” of Eskimos having lots of words to describe snow. I’m not a linguistic expert so I wasn’t making a definite statement there.

31. PJ Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

    31 Author Comment And if anyone’s interested in this kind of stuff, I took several of the words from this article, and you can find more information on other words here and here.

32. neednewbed.com Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    32 of course they are not found in the english language, they are foreign! If we are to include foreign words that are not in the english language the list is a whole lot more that 13! this artlcle is a load of Scheisse

33. Songman Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    33 There actually is a word for Litost. It is also a psychological concept known as cognitive dissonance.

34. PJ Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    34 Author Comment Needsnewbed: Looks like you didn’t read the first sentence about the words not having direct equivalent translations in English.

35. kaaaate Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    35 number five we have a shorter word for than the french. it’s called “stairway humor”

36. litost Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    36 SInce I`m polish and we have almost the same word in polish (lito??) for czech “litost”, i can state that there are two english eqivalents - mercy and pity. good fun, though.

37. Volatile Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    37 litost: since “mercy” and “pity” aren’t equivalent, they cannot really both be equivalent to a third word, now can they… Similar, yes, but not equivalent.

38. MaC Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    38 Hey. I’m from Germany Though the word “Waldeinsamkeit” makes kind of a sense to me, I have never ever heard it. Do you really use it in the English language? edit: ok, i’ve recognized some German mentioned it already. Its just two words put together and its not a real word. besides: who needs a word to describe loneliness in a forest?^^

39. Lincoln Posted: May 18th, 2008 at 11:42 pm

    39 Eskimos? Inuit… but not Eskimos…

40. PeterO Posted: May 19th, 2008 at 5:26 am

    40 While the Japanese certainly do feel perhaps more stress when speaking a foreign language than other cultures, I’ve never heard of #7 meaning what you have here. “Yoko meshi” does mean “horizontal food”, but it refers to a western meal as opposed to “tate meshi”, or “vertical food”, which would be Japanese meal. The phrase comes from the order that characters are written on the menu — So left-to-right for western languages and top-to-bottom for traditional Japanese. If you want to try a Japanese word that is not in English but which deserves to be, I’d recommend “natsukashii”. “Natsukashii” will show up in the dictionary as “something desired or missed,” but it also contains a strong component of nostaligia. For example, you might say that you really miss your Mom’s cookies. That would usually mean that they tasted great and you wanted to eat them again. If you wanted to go on and explain that you often helped your Mom make them, and this has fond memories for you, you could certainlyu do so, but it isn’t clear in the original sentence. If you said that your Mom’s cookies were “natsukashii”, listeners would immediately know that there was something more than just the taste that was important and that the cookies had some strong emotional or personal meaning for you. A Stumbler

41. Douglas Posted: May 19th, 2008 at 6:25 am

    41 Ironically, the closest thing I could think of to “taaradhin” is a word that means disagreement or “to be inconsistent.” But the definition of your word fits more in line with my experiences in Arab societies. While one can admire the sentiment of allowing everyone to save face it often frustrates more effectual agreements. My favorite double entendre word in Arabic was always “ghazal” meaning the sound of a doe and expressions of love (and a type of poetry devoted to unattainable love).

42. K Posted: May 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am

    42 Hi, I just wanted to explain #9, “guanxi,” a little better. “Guanxi” actually has multiple meanings depending on how you use it. The most commonly used meaning is that of “relations” or “connections.” For example, talking about the connections that you have with people, “shehui guanxi” a.k.a. “social connections,” or if you’re asking a question like “What does A have to do with B?” You would also use “guanxi” in such a case. In this manner, “guanxi” is really not hard to translate into English at all! The other meaning, which is probably the reason why it landed on the “hard to translate” list is that of “credentials.” I would even go so far as to say that “guanxi” could be loosely translated as “karma” in some cases. It’s basically built on the philosophy to do right by your fellow man, etc. The more good you do, the better you look in the eyes of other people, and the more willing they will be to return the favor to you. But that’s what building relationships is all about anyway, right? You do good things in the hope that others will be kind enough to return the favor when you need help. So you can see, the two definitions are related … they have “guanxi,” haha.

43. B0B Posted: May 19th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    43 Theres a small book called ‘Tingo’ with loads of crazy words from many languages,whom ever enjoyed this should check it out..

44. dandy dan Posted: May 19th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

    44 For #13, there’s an acronym that covers it: AWOL- Absent WithOut Leave.

45. Uuu Posted: May 19th, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    45 Actually, the Philipino word ‘duwende’ comes from the Spanish ‘duende’, which apart from ‘a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art’ can also mean ‘goblin’, ‘imp’, ’spirit’, etc. Hence, ‘tener duende’ could be roughly translated as “to show the [artistic] spirit”.

46. wisp Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 2:32 am

    46 Wabi-sabi (japanese): Rustic simplicity. The beauty of the imperfect, impermanent… Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, asperity, simplicity, modesty, intimacy, and suggest a natural process.

47. hondasprocket Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 6:00 am

    47 luv this posting stumbled-upon… here’s my contribution to the list - malu tetek (malay) vocab literally means “shame breast/nipple” but a phrase used to express super-embarrassment…

48. Xspirit Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    48 Great list !! I like that Word “Pochemuchka” I’m Gonna use it A lot

49. Graziela Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    49 How about the German word “shaudenfreude”? It means to take pleasure over another person’s misery. That word that doesn’t exist in any other language.

50. Hok Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    50 It’s “Schadenfreude”, not shaudenfreude. OMG. You’re such a fool. HAHAHAHA! LMAO No. Only kidding. I just wanted to express my Schadenfreude. BTW: My dictionary translates it as “gloating”.

51. Dreamer Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

    51 There’s an equivalent to �Schadenfreude� in Norwegian, and it’s called �skadefryd�. One should never state that a word doesn’t exist in any other language at all, especially when you compare German to the languages related to it, like the Scandinavian ones.

52. Mark Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    52 Surely the last one could be translated as AWOL…or Absent Without Leave, if you’re not familiar with the term. The other ones were very entertaining, thank you for a great post!

53. Bas Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 9:29 pm

    53 Maybe you should check out the Dutch word ‘gezellig’. “Its meaning includes everything from cozy to friendly, from comfortable to relaxing, and from enjoyable to gregarious.” http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/155-gezellig It’s also on Wikipedia: “The Dutch gezelligheid however is always attached to a social situation (a gezellige person is somebody who likes to be among people and socializes well), whereas the German Gem�tlichkeit can also be enjoyed alone.”

54. PJ Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 9:40 pm

    54 Author Comment Dreamer: Think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick - these words were only being compared with English, not any other languages. Thanks for your visit anyway. To the guys who were talking about being AWOL, without knowing the culture I can’t be totally sure whether that is specific enough since the word apparently also refers to some kind of truancy. There’s an interesting discussion related to this topic here.

55. shiesty1020 Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 10:45 pm

    55 there is another word from czech it is the word “kitsch.” it is used in certain circles in media studies and such and used as a word to describe junk art. but this is not the actual meaning of the word. it is described as the absolute denial of shit, in both literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. it arose as a word to describe a religios arguement about man being created in the image of god. if man is in the image of god than god must have intestines. if god does not have intestines then man is not made in his image. kitsch is believing that man is created in god’s image and ignoring the implications that god must have intestines and therefore god must shit.

56. Maarten Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    56 Another word that does not have an immediate translation in the english dictionary: Gezelligheid (Dutch): it’s a dutch word for having a good time with people, but all the words that can describe a good time in english don’t come close to an exact translation of the word gezelligheid. the dutch language holds a couple of words without translation to other languages (exept german). One of the most famous (or better yet, Infamous) words is: Apartheid… it’s one of the most terrible words we have in our language. You have discrimination, but apartheid goes beyond that meaning. go look it up

57. MadMen Posted: May 21st, 2008 at 2:26 am

    57 Saudade (Portuguese) : Is used to describe feeling of lost, nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost, It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.

58. michael Posted: May 21st, 2008 at 6:00 am

    58 I find that curse words and the more jocular insults, often don’t translate exactly from language to language. Maybe it’s just in English though, maybe because ( speaking of words such as dork, geek, etc) we’ve strayed away from their literal meanings. These words have equivalents but, they can mean different things. For example i worked in an italian restaurant once where roughly a third of the employees spoke italian, the other third spanish, the other third english. most of us at least understood one other language but not all of us so things got kinda blurred in meaning. one italian phrase i thought funny was porco dio!? i originally thought the saying was porque dio (spanish: why god!?) but eventually found out it was italian for pig god (used in place for goddamnit or what the fuck?! and sometimes followed with putana madonna, look it up) cursing aside, we had an other phrase that i think was just created by one of the chefs dot com. we would say it after something as an absurd conclusion or as a response like oh yeah? ex: man im real tired. dot com? yeah tired dot com. or my checks fucking late aagin. late checks dot com also i have a question to any native italian speakers the owner claimed to speak all three languages but no one really ever understood what the hell he was saying, and he would use the word “otherwise” about once a sentence, rarely correctly. ex: every time i come in here youre always eating, otherwise. or you, work today, its slow otherwise, you work hard. im pretty sure he was just crazy but maybe theres some catch all word in italian that doesnt come over to english as well and he just used otherwise instead. anyway im rambling, nice list.

59. karl Posted: May 21st, 2008 at 9:29 pm

    59 found this on stumble upon. another great word, is the Swedish “lagom”, which pretty much means just enough, not too much, not too little. It can be used to in many different situations like, how much do you want to drink? lagom. it is a really good word to have.

60. Rodrigo Posted: May 22nd, 2008 at 4:53 am

    60 Hi! There is a Portuguese word that people say only exists in this language… SAUDADE… it is the feeling of missing something or someone very bad…and it’s used as a noun… someone would say that he has SAUDADE of something…

61. PJ Posted: May 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am

    61 Author Comment Hi Rodrigo, MadMen mentioned Saudade earlier. Thanks though.

62. martin keats Posted: May 22nd, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    62 As far as I know meraki is a borrowed word in Greek. The word “merak” is arabic.

63. Lundy Posted: May 23rd, 2008 at 3:47 am

    63 Good list. I’m pretty sure we have #10 in English, but not certain. Also, “l’esprit de l’escalier” is literally “the spirit of the stairs”, not “on the way down the stairs”. It comes from the fact that you are leaving the social gathering where the witty remark was necessary and it comes to you on your way up/down the stairs.

64. Czech Posted: May 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm

    64 dont think the definition of Czech “litost” is correct. It rather means “a state of torment” - it doesn’t matter how it was caused. So it does have a corresponding word in English - “sorrow” works fine, for example. I guess you have the definition of “litost” from Kundera - or at least that’s how he describes the meaning. But he pretty much forgot Czech.

65. john Posted: May 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    65 Here is another: Fulerstov (Polish) - The last one to laugh at a joke

66. poda Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    66 selathirupavar….no such word in tamil….

67. razy Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    67 I think this is crazy because there are trillion more word that where not found in the english language! And I agree with poda.

68. libby Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    68 I agree with Razy.

69. lib Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    69 I think who ever wrote this website is just dum…

70. Kelly Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

    70 I agree with the four above this comment.

71. PJ Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    71 Author Comment Razy/Libby/Lib/Kelly: this post was originally written for a meme where you list 13 things of your choice, so it wasn’t meant to be an all-inclusive list. You all seem to be using the same computer so I’m not sure if you’re actually just one person playing at being a troll.

72. PJ Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

    72 Author Comment Poda: I’m a bit alarmed that you said that the word Selathirupavar ெசல்லாதிருப்பவர் doesn’t exist in Tamil. Is it that the transliterated word doesn’t match the Tamil pronunciation?

73. mariaah Posted: May 24th, 2008 at 11:17 pm

    73 hello there. **correction: a “duende” is a sort of goblin/elf/poltergeist, most commonly thought of as a little green man with all the works of elven character ya know.

74. AtzeOnAcid Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 1:57 am

    74 I’m German and have never heard the expression “Waldeinsamkeit” in my life…there are so many words that don’t have a direct English expression. Plus, the words above seem to me like rooted in the customs of those different cultures they have their origin in.

75. korna Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    75 I got another one for you. “Gezellig” it is Dutch perhaps a German equalivant is “Gemütlichkeit”. Searching for a translation into English I found this wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezellig It is really problematic when you have to explain someone in English what gezellig means! Gemütlichkeit is a German abstract noun that has been adopted into English[1]. Its closest equivalent is the word “cosiness”; however, rather than merely describing a place that is compact, well-heated and nicely furnished (a cosy room, a cosy flat), Gemütlichkeit connotes the notion of belonging, social acceptance, cheerfulness, the absence of anything hectic and the opportunity to spend quality time. A similar word, gezelligheid, exists in Dutch. The Dutch gezelligheid however is always attached to a social situation (a gezellige person is somebody who likes to be among people and socializes well), whereas Gemütlichkeit can also be enjoyed alone.

76. korna Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 4:39 pm

    76 Oops, just noticed to be the third person to mention “gezelligheid” lol. Sorry!

77. Nicole Posted: May 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm

    77 I think the most useful German word not found in th english language is “Mitzieheffekt”, literally with-pull-effect, and is used for cars at traffic lights where one lane can go whilst the other has still to wait but they sometimes think they can go and start revving until they notice that their light is still red. Reading my explanation shows how useful that word really is!

78. Ana Posted: May 26th, 2008 at 6:17 am

    78 those are pretty cool, but i speak portuguese and this language as a word that no other language has the word is “saudade” is something that u have and feel when someone is gone for a really fong time. its simillar to missing somebody but its not a verb and it means that u have a feeling that is kind of sad because someone is gone. Not like in english; missing could be just not having it at the moment, feel the absence of it but not exacly have “saudade” of something or someone i hope i could explain it well. this is my favorite word and is very pretty, belive me

79. hondasprocket Posted: May 26th, 2008 at 6:50 am

    79 think i stumbled into THE source of this list… check out http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4457805

80. Thamizh Posted: May 27th, 2008 at 5:20 am

    80 Came here via Stumbleupon ெசல்லாதிருப்பவர் in tamil literally means “a person who doesn’t go”. I saw truant being mentioned somewhere as a synonym. It’s not. It’s not AWOL either. It’s not that specific. The “not going” part could mean any place, not just work. It is a compound word. Sellaadhu (ெசல்லாது) + Iruppavar (இருப்பவர்). A lot of words in tamil (anglicized moniker of thamizh) can be combined to form a single word that is an adjective+noun or adverb+noun. Ex. வளர் (grow) + பிறை (phase) = வளர்பிறை (waxing of the moon). It might not be the best example. There are tons of thamizh words that can make this list, but I’m sure it’s the case with other languages into English and English into other languages. PS - The thamizh characters will not be in order if you don’t use IE. There’s an encoding issue with Firefox and other browsers.

81. lama010101 Posted: May 27th, 2008 at 6:14 am

    81 Great list. I like the idea very much. I am just sorry to say that I am French and never ever heard the expression ‘Esprit de l’escalier’ that is listed.

82. Volatile Posted: May 27th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    82 Thamizh: Your characters register just fine in Opera, Konqueror, epiphany and Firefox for me. (Or, well, I see tamil characters. Can’t really say if they’re correct or not…) The only browser I can get them to not show is links2, and that is because it seems to be utf-8 ignorant. I think it is more an issue of having the correct fonts installed and/or having a unicode-compatible system as a whole. Oh, and of course to set your browser to use the correct character encoding!

83. Deilsawa Posted: May 28th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    83 A’m surprised there nae mention o the follaein Scots language wirds:- kenspeckle - very well known gallus - a cheeky kind of confidence scunnert - sickened flittin - moving house dreich - wet and miserable (weather)

84. tim maguire Posted: May 29th, 2008 at 10:35 pm

    84 Stumbled in. Great list! I was familiar with the Spirit of the Stairwell (which I think we really need in every language, but especially English), but not the others. #12 seems an unnecessary choice, schadenfreude would make a great replacement.

85. alex Posted: May 30th, 2008 at 4:56 am

    85 russian confirmed literally - someone who asks a lot of WHY questions (pochemu=why)

86. paul Posted: May 30th, 2008 at 5:15 am

    86 also, “nakama” in japanese refers to a friend who one considers family.

87. Pelagian Posted: May 30th, 2008 at 9:30 am

    87 Elias Canetti, in his book ‘Crowds and Power’, said that the German national image is a wood, or a forest of marching men. This dates back to Herman and the battle of the Tueterberg Wold. Also, I suspect that the phrase ‘User friendly’ is a mistranslation from a German word. I am English, so my national image is a captain of a ship. I hope this helps.

88. Monika Posted: