Hey linguists. What's the funniest expression you know in a language?

addedc

addedc

Experienced
I speak passable Japanese and just learned that one way to say cross-eyed in Japanese is "Rompari" (sort of rhymes with Lombardi). What that literally means is "Rome/Paris," i.e. one eye looking at Rome, the other at Paris. That struck me as the funniest use of language I have heard but I am sure many of you can top it.
 
I bet that nobody has the cojones to find a better multipurpose word 🤠
(Me corto los cojones si alguien tiene huevos de encontrar una palabra más cojonuda)

"Me corto los cojones" -> Bet
"Te corto los cojones" -> Threat
"Mil pares de cojones" -> Too difficult
"Poner los cojones encima de la mesa" -> To show initiative
"Tengo los cojones morados" -> very cold
"Cojones cuadrados" -> Arrogant
"Cojones pelados" -> Experienced
"Cojones como los del caballo de Espartero" -> ungraceful, heavy-handed, dull
"Le cuelgan los cojones" -> clumsy
"Se pisa los cojones" -> lazy, carefree
"Cuestión de cojones" -> Very important topic
 
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and slight variants:

"se ha descojonado" -> it broke apart
"de cojón de mico" -> came out fucked up
"tiene cojones la cosa" -> I can't believe it
 
My step father told me a funny story when he was touring South America he was staying with a local famiky and decided to make them an American dish. He made them deviled eggs. When he told them they were called los huevos del diablo it didn’t go over very well
 
It doesn't quite fit to the thread, but a friend of my dad, who was quite a world traveler, once told me that he visited a country in which the words for "ice" and "glass" are exactly the opposite as in the neighbor country. For the rest the languages were pretty much the same.

He told that people made jokes about what might happen, if you don't know about this and go to a bar in the other country and order a Whiskey without ice! :grinning:

Too bad that I can't remember which countries that were...
 
You did not condider polish... Range of meanings of word „kurwa” or iit’s variations is much bigger than cojones, starting from usage as comma through „oh, f..k”, wh.re and finishing as adjective for negative, neutral and positive things, emotions or feelings. It is also used as last (ultimate) step of adjective staging - i.e. „wielki, większy, największy, kurewsko wielki” that means „big, bigger, biggest, unbelievably fuc.in’ huge”... Kurwa is recognition word for polish people all over the world.
 
I forget where I heard this, but apparently there's some South American flavor of Spanish, or perhaps it's just a local expression, in which "no tener pelos en so lengua" -- to not have a hairy tongue -- means to speak frankly.

I found that amusing and slightly grotesque at the same time. Can you imagine having a hairy tongue? Yeech.
 
Mohi said:
That is an Spanish expression commonly used in Spain.
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Ah, really? My apologies for having the wrong impression on that. Perhaps I got it backwards, and it isn't used in South America? Or, is it ubiquitous? (Perhaps a native-Spanish-speaker from South America could confirm this?)
 
Dr. Dipwad said:
I forget where I heard this, but apparently there's some South American flavor of Spanish, or perhaps it's just a local expression, in which "no tener pelos en so lengua" -- to not have a hairy tongue -- means to speak frankly.

I found that amusing and slightly grotesque at the same time. Can you imagine having a hairy tongue? Yeech.
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"No tener pelos en la lengua", "Hablar sin pelos en la lengua"

To understand that phrase you have to imagine the situation when an external hair gets on your tongue, not a "hairy tongue". It is annoying and difficult to speak with a hair inside the mouth, no matter how small it is. Once the hair is removed, you can talk freely and with clarity.

That expression is normally used when someone says annoying or uncomfortable truths, or when speaking openly about taboo issues.

There is a Spanish TV series with the name "Con pelos en la lengua" (with hair on the tongue). The title is suggesting the very common occurrence of pubic hair getting on the tongue while practicing oral sex 😝

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1623368/
 
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In flemish you say "Dank U madame" when a lady for example holds you the door opened so you can walk in.
In French this sounds like "dans le cul madame", which means quite something else...(I leave to the passionate reader the effort to get on the web the traduction from english to french).
 
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