I Never Knew There Was a Word For It Read online

  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) to stamp one’s feet on the ground repeatedly, getting very angry

  eshte thike me thike (Albanian) to stand toenail to toenail (prior to an argument)

  Mind the gap

  Several cultures have words to describe the space between or behind limbs: irqa (Khakas, Siberia) is the gap between spread legs, and awawa (Hawaiian) that between each finger or toe. While jahja in Wagiman (Australia) and waal in Afrikaans both mean the area behind the knee.

  Skin deep

  We describe it with just one word but other cultures go much further, whether it’s alang (Ulwa, Nicaragua), the fold of skin under the chin; aka’aka’a (Hawaiian), skin peeling or falling off after either sunburn or heavy drinking; or karelu (Tulu, India), the mark left on the skin by wearing anything tight. Another Ulwa word, yuputka, records something we have all experienced – having the sensation of something crawling on one’s skin.

  Covering up

  Once it comes to adding clothes to the human frame, people have the choice of either dressing up …

  tiré à quatre épingles (French) dressed up to the nines (literally, drawn to four pins)

  ’akapoe (Cook Islands Maori) donning earrings or putting flowers behind the ears

  angkin (Indonesian) a long wide cloth belt worn by women to keep them slim

  Pomadenhengst (German) a dandy (literally, a hair-cream stallion)

  FHCP (French) acronym of Foulard Hermès Collier Perles, Hermes scarf pearl necklace (a female Sloane Ranger)

  or down …

  opgelozen (Yiddish) a careless dresser

  padella (Italian) an oily stain on clothes (literally, a frying pan)

  Krawattenmuffel (German) one who doesn’t like wearing ties

  cotisuelto (Caribbean Spanish) one who wears the shirt tail outside of the trousers

  tan (Chinese) to wear nothing above one’s waist

  or just as they feel …

  sygekassebriller (Danish) granny glasses

  rash (Arabic) skirt worn under a sleeveless smock

  alyaska (Russian) anorak or moon-boots

  hachimaki (Japanese) headbands worn by males to encourage concentration and effort

  ujut’a (Quechuan, Peru) sandals made from tyres

  English clothing

  English words for clothes have slipped into many languages. Sometimes the usage is fairly literal, as in smoking to describe a dinner jacket in Swedish or Portuguese; or pants for a tracksuit in Spanish. Sometimes it’s more metaphorical: the Hungarians call jeans farmer, while their term for a T-shirt is polo. In Barbados the cloth used for the lining of men’s clothes is known as domestic. Sometimes it’s just an odd mix: the Danish for jeans, for example, is cowboybukser, while the Japanese sebiro means a fashionably cut suit, being their pronunciation of Savile Row, London’s famous street of tailors.

  On reflection

  Go whistle

  On the tiny mountainous Canary Island of La Gomera there is a language called Silbo Gomero that uses a variety of whistles instead of words (in Spanish silbar means to whistle). There are four ‘vowels’ and four ‘consonants’, which can be strung together to form more than four thousand ‘words’. This birdlike means of communication is thought to have come over with early African settlers over 2500 years ago. Able to be heard at distances of up to two miles, the silbador was until recently a dying breed. Since 1999, however, Silbo has been a required language in La Gomera schools.

  The Mazateco Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, are frequently seen whistling back and forth, exchanging greetings or buying and selling goods with no risk of misunderstanding. The whistling is not really a language or even a code; it simply uses the rhythms and pitch of ordinary speech without the words. Similar whistling languages have been found in Greece, Turkey and China, whilst other forms of wordless communication include the talking drums (ntumpane) of the Kele in Congo, the xylophones used by the Northern Chin of Burma, the banging on the roots of trees practised by the Melanesians, the yodelling of the Swiss, the humming of the Chekiang Chinese and the smoke signals of the American Indians.
r />   Movers and Shakers

  mas vale rodear que no ahogar (Spanish)

  better go about than fall into the ditch

  Shanks’s pony

  There’s much more to walking than simply putting one foot in front of the other:

  berlenggang (Indonesian) to walk gracefully by swinging one’s hands or hips

  aradupopini (Tulu, India) to walk arm in arm or hand in hand

  uitwaaien (Dutch) to walk in windy weather for fun

  murr-ma (Wagiman, Australia) to walk along in the water searching for something with your feet

  ’akihi (Hawaiian) to walk off without paying attention to directions

  Walking in Zimbabwe

  The Shona-speaking people of Zimbabwe have some very specialized verbs for different kinds of walking: chakwaira, through a muddy place making a squelching sound; dowora, for a long time on bare feet; svavaira, huddled, cold and wet; minaira, with swinging hips; pushuka, in a very short dress; shwitaira, naked; sesera, with the flesh rippling; and tabvuka, with such thin thighs that you seem to be jumping like a grasshopper.

  Malaysian movements

  The elegant Malaysians have a highly specialized vocabulary to describe movement, both of the right kind, as in kontal-kontil, ‘the swinging of long earrings or the swishing of a dress as one walks’, and the wrong, as in jerangkang, ‘to fall over with your legs in the air’. Others include:

  kengkang to walk with your legs wide apart

  tenjack to limp with your heels raised

  kapai to flap your arms so as to stay afloat

  gayat feeling dizzy while looking down from a high place

  seluk to put your hand in your pocket

  bongkeng sprawling face down with your bottom in the air

  Ups …

  Sometimes our movements are deliberately athletic, whether this involves hopping on one leg (vogget in Cornish, hinke in Danish), rolling like a ball (ajawyry in the Wayampi language of Brazil), or something more adventurous:

  angama (Swahili) to hang in mid-air

  vybafnout (Czech) to surprise someone by saying boo

  puiyarpo (Inuit) to show your head above water

  povskakat’ (Russian) to jump one after another

  tarere (Cook Islands Maori) to send someone flying through the air

  lele kawa (Hawaiian) to jump into the sea feet first

  Lele kawa, of course, is usually followed by curglaff, Scottish dialect for the shock felt when plunging into cold water.

  … and downs

  But on other occasions there seems to be a banana skin waiting for us on the pavement:

  blart (Ullans, Northern Ireland) to fall flat in the mud

  lamhdanaka (Ulwa, Nicaragua) to collapse sideways (as when walking on uneven ground)

  tunuallak (Inuit) slipping and falling over on your back while walking

  kejeblos (Indonesian) to fall into a hole by accident

  apismak (Turkish) to spread the legs apart and collapse

  jeruhuk (Malay) the act of stumbling into a hole that is concealed by long grass

  False friends

  gush (Albanian) to hug each other around the neck

  shagit (Albanian) to crawl on one’s belly

  snags (Afrikaans) during the night

  sofa (Icelandic) sleep

  purr (Scottish Gaelic) to headbutt

  What-d’you-call-it

  Just because there is no word for it in English doesn’t mean we haven’t done it or experienced it:

  mencolek (Indonesian) touching someone lightly with one finger in order to tease them

  wasoso (Hausa, Nigeria) to scramble for something that has been thrown

  idumbulu (Tulu, India) seizing each other tightly with both hands

  přesezený (Czech) being stiff from sitting in the same position too long

  ’alo’alo kiki (Hawaiian) to dodge the rain by moving quickly

  honuhonu (Hawaiian) to swim with the hands only

  engkoniomai (Ancient Greek) to sprinkle sand over oneself

  tallabe (Zarma, Nigeria) to carry things on one’s head without holding on to them

  gagrom (Boro, India) to search for a thing below water by trampling

  chonggang-chongget (Malay) to keep bending forward and then straightening (as a hill-climber)

  When it all goes horribly wrong …

  That sinking feeling, puangi (Cook Islands Maori), the sensation of the stomach dropping away (as in the sudden surge of a lift, plane, swing or a tossed boat), is something we know all too well, as are:

  dokidoki (Japanese) rapid pounding heartbeats caused by worry or surprise

  a’anu (Cook Islands Maori) to sit huddled up, looking pinched and miserable

  nggregeli (Indonesian) to drop something due to nerves

  bingildamak (Turkish) to quiver like jelly

  … scarper

  baotou shucuon (Chinese) to cover one’s head with both hands and run away like a coward

  achaplinarse (Spanish, Central America) to hesitate and then run away in the manner of Charlie Chaplin

  Learning to relax

  In some parts of the world relaxation doesn’t necessarily mean putting your feet up:

  ongkang-ongkang (Indonesian) to sit with one leg dangling down

  naganaga (Rapa Nui, Easter Island) to squat without resting your buttocks on your heels

  lledorweddle (Welsh) to lie down while propping yourself up with one elbow

  karvat (Hindi) the side of the body on which one rests

  Dropping off

  Once we start relaxing, snoozing becomes an increasingly strong possibility. Both Danish, with raevesøvn, and Russian, with vpolglaza, have a word to describe sleeping with one eye open, while other languages describe other similar states of weariness:

  aiguttoa (Votic, Estonia) to yawn repeatedly

  teklak-tekluk (Indonesian) the head bobbing up and down with drowsiness

  utsura-utsura (Japanese) to fluctuate between wakefulness and being half asleep

  utouto (Japanese) to fall into a light sleep without realizing it

  tengkurap (Indonesian) to lie or sleep with the face downwards

  kulubut (Kapampangan, Philippines) to go under the blanket

  Out for the count

  Having achieved the state the Japanese describe as guuguu, ‘the sound of someone in a deep sleep accompanied by snoring’, we can either have a good night …

  bilita mpash (Bantu, Zaire) blissful dreams

  altjiranga mitjina (Aranda, Australia) the timeless dimensions of dreams

  ngarong (Dyak, Borneo) an adviser who appears in a dream and clarifies a problem

  rêve à deux (French) a mutual dream, a shared hallucination

  morgenfrisk (Danish) fresh from a good night’s sleep

  … or a bad one:

  menceracan (Malay) to cry in one’s sleep

  kekau (Indonesian) to wake up from a nightmare

  igau (Malay) to talk while trapped in a nightmare

  kerinan (Indonesian) to oversleep until the sun is up

  On reflection

  Back as forth

  Whatever their length, words have provided excellent material for games from the earliest times. One of the more pleasing arrangements is the palindrome, which is spelt the same backwards as forwards, and can create some bizarre meanings:

  neulo taas niin saat oluen (Finnish) knit again, so that you will get a beer

  Nie fragt sie: ist gefegt? Sie ist gar fein (German) she never asks: has the sweeping been done? She is very refined

  in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (Latin) we enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire

  nipson anomemata me monan opsin (Ancient Greek) wash (off) my sins, not only my face (written on the edge of a well in Constantinople: NB the ‘ps’ is a transcription of the Greek letter ψ)

  The Finns have three of the world’s longest palindromic words:

  saippuakivikauppias a soapstone seller

 
; saippuakuppinippukauppias a soap-cup trader

  solutomaattimittaamotulos the result from a measurement laboratory for tomatoes

  Getting Around

  dalu tongtian, ge zou yi bian (Chinese)

  the highway comes out of one’s mouth

  Thumbing it

  Some rides are free:

  fara a puttanu (Icelandic) to hitchhike (literally, to travel on the thumb)

  usqar (Khakas, Siberia) to take someone on the back of one’s horse

  radif (Persian) one who rides behind another on the same horse

  menggonceng (Indonesian) to have a free ride usually on a friend’s bike

  plomo (Spanish, Central America) a bus passenger who is just on for the free ride (literally, a lead weight)

  Others involve money …

  ngetem (Indonesian) to stop (of a bus) longer than necessary at unauthorized points along the route to the terminus to look for more paying passengers

  ngojek (Indonesian) to earn money by carrying a paying passenger on the rear seat of one’s motorbike

  … or getting your own transport:

  essoreuse (French) a noisy motorbike (literally, spindryer)