I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World

by Jag Bhalla

  A good dog never gets a good bone: nice guys finish last (French)

  Dog foot: to wander (Spanish, Mexico)

  Little dog of all weddings: very social person (Spanish)

  Do the dead dog: leave without paying (Spanish, Chile)

  When dogs were tied with sausages: a very long time ago (Spanish, Uruguay)

  Like a dog in a canoe: to be very nervous (Spanish, Puerto Rico)

  Beat a drowning dog: crush an already defeated enemy (Chinese)

  Dog-headed counselor: a bad adviser (Chinese)

  Like a dog and a monkey: on bad terms (Japanese)

  To hang all the dogs: to blame someone else (Russian)

  Like a fifth foot on a dog: useless (Russian)

  A fat dog: a shocking piece of news (German)

  Rain young dogs: rain heavily (German)

  If I speak my mother will die, if I don’t my father will eat dog meat: an acute dilemma, between a rock and a hard place (Hindi)

  The dog’s tail remains crooked: incorrigible (Arabic)

  A dog’s fart: nonsense (Chinese)

  So that was the poodle’s core: that’s what was behind the matter (German)

  A dog has licked your mouth: a mild curse (Polish)

  Between dog and wolf: at dusk (French)

  Live in the butt of the wolf: live very far away (Italian)

  In the mouth of the wolf: with luck (Italian)

  HORSE-LIKE ANIMALS

  Little horse style: piggy-back (Italian)

  Horse: idiot (Yiddish)

  You’re on the horse: you’re all set (Yiddish)

  To shine like a honey-cake horse: to smile broadly (German)

  To tell someone from a horse: tell a tall tale (German)

  To have a horse’s foot: a hidden disadvantage (German)

  Show the horse’s hoof: the plot is revealed (Chinese)

  Like a horse that grows only in the number of teeth: having accomplished nothing despite one’s advanced age (Chinese)

  Like ten thousand horses rushing forward: to rush in (Chinese)

  Here the donkey falls: there’s the rub (the important part) (Italian)

  Feeding barley to the tail when the donkey is dead: to lock the barn door after the horse has bolted (Spanish)

  Donkey killers: dictionaries (Spanish, Mexico)

  A camel can’t see its own hump

  Arabic: a pot calling a kettle black

  Female donkey: bus (Spanish, Guatemala)

  Camel-hearted: timid (Hindi)

  I have no female or male camel in it: not my business (Arabic)

  To mount [one] on a mule: to expose to disgrace (Hindi)

  To get off the burro: to back down, give up (Spanish)

  A camel cannot see its own hump: a pot calling a kettle black (Arabic)

  On which side will the camel sit?: let’s see how things turn out (Hindi)

  FISH & SEA CREATURES

  Way of the fish: law of the jungle (Hindi)

  He who sleeps gets no fish: don’t be late (Italian)

  To drown the fish: to lose by deliberate confusion (French)

  To change the fishes’ water: to urinate (Spanish, Costa Rica)

  Scaled like a fish: frightened or nervous (Spanish, Mexico)

  Codfish: an agreeable or lazy person (Spanish, Colombia)

  Bye fish: a comic way to say goodbye (Spanish)

  Like fish in water: in a very agreeable situation (Chinese)

  To be like a fish in water: to enjoy comforts, be in one’s element (Spanish)

  Climb a tree to catch a fish: attempt the impossible (Chinese)

  Knock oneself out like a fish against ice: against all odds (Russian)

  You see less than a fish through its butt: not very bright (Spanish)

  Climb a tree to catch a fish

  Chinese: attempt the impossible

  A guest and a fish after three days are poison: proverb (French)

  Cooked like a lobster: exhausted (Italian)

  An octopus in a garage: like a fish out of water (Spanish)

  There’s an eel under the rock: something’s suspicious, something’s fishy (French)

  OTHER ANIMALS

  Rabbit punch: whiplash injury (French)

  He’s a famous rabbit: he’s a sly devil (French)

  To give cat for rabbit: to dupe (Spanish)

  To have the heart of a rabbit: to be fearful (Italian)

  To know how the rabbit runs: to know your way around (German)

  A cow bell: a chatter box (Russian)

  Eviscerate a cow: to bad mouth (Spanish, Argentina)

  To not go on cowhide: to be beyond belief (German)

  Sell someone a bear: to pull someone’s leg, to tease (German)

  To tie a bear to someone: to tell tales (German)

  To have a pig: to be very lucky (German)

  To poke at a bush and get a snake: to have a plan that backfires (Japanese)

  Show where crab spend winters: show someone what is what (Russian)

  As an elephant in a dish store: like a bull in a china shop (Russian)

  A dead fly: one who appears dim-witted but takes advantage, hypocrite (Spanish)

  A butterfly’s leg: a mild insult (Polish)

  To have a titmouse under one’s bangs: crazy (German)

  Think of a gorilla, then of a horse: restless, capricious (Chinese)

  To die dressed

  Spanish: an unnatural death

  chapter four

  APPEARANCES & HEALTH

  Go out by the neck of your shirt

  BY DEFINITION, IDIOMS are deceptive…just like appearances can be. We have idioms to express exactly that thought: all that glitters isn’t gold, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, never judge a book by its cover, and clothes do not make the man. Similarly, suspicious Italians say “clothes do not make the monk” and the Chinese warn us “not to judge the horse by its saddle.” As we will see in Chapter Ten, however, some appearances can also be undeceptive. Arabic has a relevant proverb: “A book can be read from its title.” That’s clearly not applicable to this book.

  Despite the admonitions of various proverbs, and despite the prevailing climate of oxymoronic political correctness, we are wired to judge people by appearances. We do it very quickly and unconsciously. Without giving it a second thought, or a first conscious thought for that matter, we notice a person’s race in a hundred milliseconds and a person’s gender in 150.1

  Key aspects of the way we appear to others are beyond our conscious control. That’s what makes them reliable as honest signals. For example, trained smile-ologists can use these uncontrollable truthful leaks to tell when a smile is genuine. They classify smiles as being either Pan American or Duchenne. Pan Ams are forced false smiles, which use only the muscles we have conscious control over, those around the mouth (contraction of zygomaticus major). Duchenne smiles, named after French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne, are the genuine kind and also involve involuntary contraction of muscles around the eyes (inferior part of orbicularis oculi lateralis), causing laugh lines or crow’s feet. This action also pulls down the lateral border of the eyebrow. It’s possible that the consciously controllable Pan Am muscles can push the cheek up (or, as the Japanese say, “the cheeks become loose”) enough to cause crow’s feet, which means smiling eyes can still lie. The Japanese demonstrate their greater facial precision by noting that to look pleased is to “lower the outside corners of your eyes.”

  In an astonishing demonstration of the reliability of the connection between appearances and health, psychologists have shown how appearances can be undeceptive over several decades. A yearbook from Mills College for 1960 was analyzed to classify the genuineness of the girls’ smiles (it is a girls-only school). Their progress through life was periodically monitored. It turns out that the women who genuinely smiled in that one photo decades ago were more likely to have happy lives, stable relationships, and better overall heath.2

  Unfortunately, some of these once-reliable way
s of judging appearances are now subject to cosmetic perjury. Our insatiable demand to recapture aspects of our youthful yearbook looks has created a huge industry dedicated to voluntarily immobilizing the involuntary muscles of our own faces. By injecting Botox, a powerful toxin, we can suppress the wrinkles that are usually reliable signals of aging. The relationship between beauty, the eye, and the beholder has been updated. Beauty is now also around the eye of the beheld. But such measures are a blunt instrument (the Germans might say “like shooting sparrows with a cannon”); they immobilize all of the related subtle facial signals, leaving the apparently newly youthful with an inhumanly flat emotional affect.

  Surprisingly, such attempts to use poisons to engineer subtle false facial impressions aren’t new. Seventeenth-century Venetian women used an extract of the belladonna plant to dilate their pupils. We are more strongly attracted to those who seem attracted to us, and pupil dilation is a powerful (and naturally involuntary) indicator of interest and attraction. That’s how the plant that is the source of this early paralytic cosmetic got its name—belladonna means “beautiful lady” in Italian.3

  …which brings us back to language and idioms on appearances and health…

  While English speakers say that someone looks foxy, meaning attractive or sexy, to a Spaniard “to be made foxes” means almost the opposite, to be poorly dressed. In language teaching, these sorts of words or phrases that mean something very different when translated are called “false friends”—more on those later. When we say someone has the “face of a monkey,” that typically wouldn’t be a compliment, but to a Spaniard that would mean the person is cute (usually used to describe children). While a short Englishman might be knee-high to a grasshopper, the equivalent Russian isn’t quite so diminutive, being “shorter than a sparrow’s nose,” and a vertically challenged Frenchman is even more impressive, being as “tall as three apples.” Speaking of tall, we don’t have a widely used English idiom for tallness, but such a vertically blessed Spaniard would be “taller than the hope of a poor person.”

  Shorter than a sparrow’s nose

  Russian: short

  Where we might say that someone is as strong as an ox, a similarly powerful Spaniard would be “made into a mule.” Strong as an ox also has the connotation of being very healthy, which in Russian is to be like “blood with milk.” To achieve the same status, a Frenchman is required only to have “sound feet and eyes.” At the opposite end of the health spectrum, both Russians and French who aren’t well are “not in their plates.” If not being well goes on too long, we might end up with one foot in the grave, whereas a similarly imperiled Spanish speaker would be more active, having “one foot in the stirrup.” Spanish speakers apparently prefer to die naked—since for them to “die dressed” is to “die of unnatural causes.” When dead we push up daisies; however, the recently departed French continue their love of eating: Their corpses “eat dandelions by their roots.” At the same time, some deceased Germans have a decreased appetite, as they just “look at a radish from underneath,” while others “bite into grass.”

  SKINNY

  To go out by the neck of the shirt (Spanish)

  To fall out of a suit (German)

  Thin as a breadstick or nail (Italian)

  To be an asparagus (French)

  Become like a thorn: very thin, wasting away (Hindi)

  FAT

  Lots of soup or full of soup (French)

  Riding breeches: to have saddlebags (French)

  Juicy: a plump attractive person (Yiddish)

  Bed-breaking: hefty (Hindi)

  Ganges of dung: a fat (also useless) person or a complete fool (Hindi)

  SHORT OR TALL

  Taller than the hope of a poor person (Spanish, Puerto Rico)

  Tall as three apples (French)

  Shorter than a sparrow’s nose (Russian)

  Noodle: a tall thin person (Yiddish)

  WELL DRESSED/STYLISH

  To have some quality of a dog: to be stylish (French)

  To be pulled down/drawn by four pins: to be dressed up (French)

  To be tied up: to be very chic (French)

  To put yourself on your thirty-one: dressed to the nines (French)

  Dressed in twenty-five pins: all dressed up (Spanish)

  With pipe and glove: all dressed up (Spanish, Mexico)

  Hair cream stallion: dandy (German)

  Sugar one’s waffle/honeycomb: put on makeup (French)

  To be touched up: to have cosmetic surgery (Italian)

  A cleaning/to reface the façade: a facelift (French)

  POORLY DRESSED

  Four-dollar outfit (Italian)

  To be made foxes (Spanish)

  Look like the Mona Lisa after a spanking (Czech)

  To look like a hanged cat: to not look good (Danish)

  UNATTRACTIVE/UNAPPEALING

  With the head of a buck and the eyes of a rat: proverb (Chinese)

  To have the face of bad milk: to look in a bad mood (Spanish)

  To make one’s face cloudy: to look glum (Japanese)

  A salty face: to look sullen (Japanese)

  Neither skin nor muzzle: unappealing look (Russian)

  Like the backside of a vulture: unattractive (Finnish)

  HEALTHY/FIT/STRONG

  To be blown up like a balloon: over muscular (Italian)

  To be a wardrobe: to be well built (Italian)

  A wardrobe with a mirror: to be well built (French)

  A wardrobe of ice cream: a great hulking brute (French)

  Square: well built (Spanish, Mexico)

  To be made into a mule: to be very strong (Spanish)

  A flower pot: a muscular pot (Spanish, Chile)

  To be healthy like a fish (Italian)

  To keep the line: to keep trim (French)

  To have the French fry: to be in great shape (French)

  To have the salad: to be fit (German)

  Blood with milk: picture of health (Russian)

  To have sound feet and eyes: to be healthy (French)

  While one’s eyes are still black: while still healthy (Japanese)

  Increase in fat content: in one’s prime (Japanese)

  OLD

  Onion head: with gray hair (Spanish, Mexico)

  To be for light soup and good wine: on one’s last legs (Spanish)

  The bones become loose: to be impaired by age or injury (Hindi)

  Ripe mango: old person (Hindi)

  Out to plant cabbage: out to pasture, retired, old (French)

  Gate-closing panic: fear of time running out (German)

  ILL/WEAK/TIRED

  Tongue hanging out like a man’s tie: exhausted (Spanish)

  Stick one’s chin out: exhausted (Japanese)

  Cooked like a lobster: exhausted (Italian)

  Plucked out like a chicken: exhausted (Yiddish)

  Have the midday devil: midlife crisis (French)

  To flip one’s eyes: faint (Italian)

  Not in your plate: to not feel well (French and Russian)

  One hundred holes and one thousand wounds: in a state of ruin (Chinese)

  No skin no face (which rhymes in the original): to look awful (Russian)

  To smile yellow: to give a sickly grin (French)

  To loosen one’s teeth: something that is nauseating (Japanese)

  To make the kittens: to vomit or throw up (Italian)

  Like the she-monkey: under the weather (Spanish, Chile)

  No unscratched skin on the body: injured all over (Hindi)

  The wound of words is worse than the wound of swords: proverb (Arabic)

  May all your teeth but one fall out and may that get a toothache: curse (Yiddish)*

  DYING/DEAD

  To have one foot in the stirrup: to be at death’s door (Spanish, Mexico)

  Two fingers from death: at death’s door (French)

  To whistle on the last hole: to be at death’s door (German)

  An insect’s breathing:
at death’s door (Japanese)

  The heart to be in the throat: at death’s door (Hindi)

  The nails to be blue: at death’s door (Hindi)

  To die dressed: to die unnaturally (Spanish, Mexico)

  To pass one’s weapon to the left: to die (French)

  To swallow one’s birth certificate: to die (French)

  To eat dandelions by their roots: to be pushing up daisies (French)

  To look at a radish from underneath: to be pushing up daisies (German)

  To break your pipe: to die (French)

  To close the umbrella: to die (Spanish, Costa Rica)

  To hang up one’s saber: to die (Spanish, Cuba)

  To hang up the gloves: to die (Spanish)

  To scare off the mule: to die (Spanish, Mexico)

  To become a Buddha: to die (Japanese)

  To stretch out the legs: to die (Hindi)

  Dissolution of the body into its five constituents: to die (Hindi)

  Quiet ones: the dead (Spanish, Colombia)

  Who knows when death or a customer will come: proverb (India)

  Go into the ground: drop dead (Yiddish)

  On whom mercy is shown: the deceased, the late (Hindi)

  The bald one: death (Spanish, Cuba)

  Flesh of the dead: mushroom (Spanish, Mexico)

  He should marry the daughter of the Angel of Death: curse (Yiddish)

  Two fingers from death

  French: at death’s door, almost dead

  To fart higher than your butt

  French: to be snooty, posh, to put on airs

  chapter five

  HEADS & TAILS