Curious foreign idioms & misdemenours

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I have engaged in a small project about foreign idiosynchrocies and so on.
e.g when we say Sh*t we sidestep it by saying Sugar
but when the French say Merde (Sh*t) they sidestep it by saying Mercredi (Wednesday). Does anybody else have any examples of such mundane curiousness or examples of Idioms and so on that I could put in my project?

[Chris]

Yes. When some people think something is nice, they say "That's just Peachey". I've never understood it myself.

[Julian]

Whatever happened to peachey?

[Chris]

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Julian

Whatever happened to peachey?

Banned. Somewhere between 10 and 15 times I believe

[Scrubbs]

the only swearword I have come across in norwegian is " farn en helviter" ( Phonetically spelt) which means fire and hell

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by danielf

Banned. Somewhere between 10 and 15 times I believe

11-16

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Originally Posted by Scrubbs

the only swearword I have come across in norwegian is " farn en helviter" ( Phonetically spelt) which means fire and hell

"Fi Faun" was one that was commonly used when I was there, along with the less used and more rude "Fitte Faun", meaning repsctivley, I think, ' call the devil' and something which I did not quite grasp but it was pretty rude

[danielf]

Swearing in Dutch (as in name-calling), mostly revolves around diseases and genitalia: words like plague, cancer, mumps, pleuritis, cholera are often used to express ones dislike of an object or a group of people.

Go F yourself would be something like: Krijg de klere ( go get cholera)

or

Die klerehollanders zijn niet te vertrouwen (Those cholera-ridden (bloody) Dutch people cannot be trusted).

Also, the C word (which is considered quite mild) and desease related words can be used as an adjective to indicate something is not functioning properly.

Wat een kutfiets/pleurisfiets (what a c-bike/pleuritis-ridden bike) meaning: hm, this bicycle has seen better days.

Also, damnation is used in an interesting way. The original swear word is Godverdomme, which means God Damn Me (rather than damning others).

[Nugget]

Originally Posted by danielf

<snip>Also, the C word (which is considered quite mild) and desease related words can be used as an adjective to indicate something is not functioning properly.<snippety-snip>

There's a very good point here - what is it that makes a swear word as rude as people think that they are?

For example, the F word has only been considered to be very rude over the past 60 or 70 years, whereas it was originally used to essentially describe sex. What is it that made it such a rude word?

Then you get the C word - this is regarded as possibly the worst word you can use these days but, as danielf says, in other countries it's not particularly a problem? Why is it considered to be so bad here?

[basa]

Originally Posted by Nugget

There's a very good point here - what is it that makes a swear word as rude as people think that they are?

For example, the F word has only been considered to be very rude over the past 60 or 70 years, whereas it was originally used to essentially describe sex. What is it that made it such a rude word?

Then you get the C word - this is regarded as possibly the worst word you can use these days but, as danielf says, in other countries it's not particularly a problem? Why is it considered to be so bad here?

With some people the 'F' word seems to be an all embracing adjective or adverb for use in general conversation, but seems (IMO) to be ruder and cruder when used in a true sexual context ??? How weird is that ?

[Theodoric]

Out of curiosity, I've just done a bit of Googling and, at this site, about half way down, I found a list of foreign idioms for faeces (although I don't know if any of them are euphemisms).

EDIT This may be a first! The forum profanity censor has bleeped out an important bit of the URL! Try as I did, googling on +foreign +idioms +profanity. It's somewhere near the top of the first page.

[Fibonacci poem]

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Out of curiosity, I've just done a bit of Googling and, at this site, about half way down, I found a list of foreign idioms for faeces (although I don't know if any of them are euphemisms).

EDIT This may be a first! The forum profanity censor has bleeped out an important bit of the URL! Try as I did, googling on +foreign +idioms +profanity. It's somewhere near the top of the first page.

good find that. I appreciate you finding that.

in English we'd say someone was "out of his tree," in French he would be "pedaling in the semolina"

[Chris]

Aaaand it's goodnight from Peachey once again. Bye, bye, for the n th time.

This troll thread is now closed.