Junkbox

Foreign Words We Could Use in English

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:20:36 +0100

Kummerspeck (German)
Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.
Shemomedjamo (Georgian)
You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it?
Tartle (Scots)
The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.
Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)
This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.
Backpfeifengesicht (German)
A face badly in need of a fist.
Iktsuarpok (Inuit)
You know that feeling of anticipation when you’re waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they’re there yet?
Pelinti (Buli, Ghana)
Your friend bites into a piece of piping hot pizza, then opens his mouth and sort of tilts his head around while making an “aaaarrrahh” noise. The Ghanaians have a word for that. More specifically, it means “to move hot food around in your mouth.”
Greng-jai (Thai)
That feeling you get when you don’t want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.
Mencolek (Indonesian)
You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from behind to fool them? The Indonesians have a word for it.
Faamiti (Samoan)
To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child.
Gigil (Filipino)
The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute.
Yuputka (Ulwa)
A word made for walking in the woods at night, it’s the phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin.
Zhaghzhagh (Persian)
The chattering of teeth from the cold or from rage.
Vybafnout (Czech)
A word tailor-made for annoying older brothers—it means to jump out and say boo.
Fremdschämen (German)
; Myötähäpeä (Finnish)
The kindler, gentler cousins of Schadenfreude, both these words mean something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.”
Lagom (Swedish)
Maybe Goldilocks was Swedish? This slippery little word is hard to define, but means something like, “Not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.”
Pålegg (Norweigian)
Sandwich Artists unite! The Norwegians have a non-specific descriptor for anything – ham, cheese, jam, Nutella, mustard, herring, pickles, Doritos, you name it – you might consider putting into a sandwich.
Layogenic (Tagalog)
Remember in Clueless when Cher describes someone as “a full-on Monet…from far away, it’s OK, but up close it’s a big old mess”? That’s exactly what this word means.
Bakku-shan (Japanese)
Or there this Japanese slang term, which describes the experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.
Seigneur-terraces (French)
Coffee shop dwellers who sit at tables a long time but spend little money.
Ya’arburnee (Arabic)
This word is the hopeful declaration that you will die before someone you love deeply, because you cannot stand to live without them. Literally, may you bury me.
Pana Po’o (Hawaiian)
“Hmm, now where did I leave those keys?” he said, pana po’oing. It means to scratch your head in order to help you remember something you’ve forgotten.
Slampadato (Italian)
Addicted to the UV glow of tanning salons? This word describes you.
Zeg (Georgian)
It means “the day after tomorrow.” OK, we do have “overmorrow” in English, but when was the last time someone used that?
Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese)
Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for “tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair.”
Koi No Yokan (Japanese)
The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.
Kaelling (Danish)
You know that woman who stands on her doorstep (or in line at the supermarket, or at the park, or in a restaurant)
cursing at her children? The Danes know her, too.
Boketto (Japanese)
It’s nice to know that the Japanese think enough of the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking to give it a name.
L’esprit de l’escalier (French)
Literally, stairwell wit—a too-late retort thought of only after departure.
Cotisuelto (Caribbean Spanish)
A word that would aptly describe the prevailing fashion trend among American men under 40, it means one who wears the shirt tail outside of his trousers.
Packesel (German)
The packesel is the person who’s stuck carrying everyone else’s bags on a trip. Literally, a burro.
Hygge (Danish)
Denmark’s mantra, hygge is the pleasant, genial, and intimate feeling associated with sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends.
Cavoli Riscaldati (Italian)
The result of attempting to revive an unworkable relationship. Translates to “reheated cabbage.”
Bilita Mpash (Bantu)
An amazing dream. Not just a “good” dream; the opposite of a nightmare.
Litost (Czech)
Milan Kundera described the emotion as “a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”
Luftmensch (Yiddish)
There are several Yiddish words to describe social misfits. This one is for an impractical dreamer with no business sense.

"Que m’importe que tu sois sage ? Sois belle ! et sois triste ! Les pleurs Ajoutent un..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:47:26 +0100

“Que m’importe que tu sois sage ?
Sois belle ! et sois triste ! Les pleurs
Ajoutent un charme au visage,
Comme le fleuve au paysage ;
L’orage rajeunit les fleurs.”

- Charles Baudelaire,Extrait de Madrigal triste, Les fleurs du mal (via commeunlivreouvert)

theonlymagicleftisart: (Carter Murdoch)

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:43:01 +0100

theonlymagicleftisart:

(Carter Murdoch)

Tomorrow begins the week of goodbyes, what a mad seven years it’s been.

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:52:55 +0100

Tomorrow begins the week of goodbyes, what a mad seven years it’s been.

Photo

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:59:19 +0100

always-fair-weather: 8/100 days of Gene Kelly

Sun, 19 May 2013 17:58:32 +0100

always-fair-weather:

8/100 days of Gene Kelly

theantidote: Olga Trushnikova (via womenandcats:)

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:58:54 +0100

theantidote:

Olga Trushnikova

(via womenandcats:)

theantidote: Franz Liszt - Consolation No. 3 Album: Horowitz...

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:54:49 +0100

theantidote:

Franz Liszt - Consolation No. 3

Album: Horowitz Plays Liszt

(via syng:)

theantidote: Andres Segovia - Siciliana (Listen...

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:54:33 +0100

theantidote:

Andres Segovia - Siciliana

(Listen here)

(via mfs:)

Photo

Sun, 12 May 2013 15:06:45 +0100

"When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:26:42 +0100

““When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf-life in some corner on an out-of-the-way library somehwere in Reykjavik, Valladolid or Vancouver.””

- Amos Oz

(via hmhbooks)

theantidote: Clever Surrealist Photographs That Evoke Man Ray’s...

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:25:11 +0100

theantidote:

Clever Surrealist Photographs That Evoke Man Ray’s Witty Spirit

Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of surrealism is that it was funny. For all that the eyeball-slicing of Un Chien Andalou and the nightmarish dreamscapes of Salvador Dalí’s paintings are singularly disconcerting, the movement also had an endearingly quirky sense of humor — one that’s echoed in these playfully surrealist black-and-white pictures at Faith is Torment. They evoke the spirit of Man Ray, juxtaposing the mundane and the bizarre in ways that are both striking and amusing: a spoon casts the shadow of a fork, a ladder leads into a mirror, plates sit stacked in the grating that covers a street drain. They’re the work of Spanish photographer Jose Maria Rodriguez Madoz, who goes by the name Chema Madoz.

(via bobbycaputo:)

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:15:55 +0100

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald (via likeafieldmouse)

artchipel: Kawashima Kotori 川島小鳥 - Mirai-chan 未来ちゃん

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:57:26 +0100

artchipel:

Kawashima Kotori 川島小鳥 - Mirai-chan 未来ちゃん

2headedsnake: Isaac Cordal - ‘Cement Bleak’ Isaac Cordal uses...

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:54:30 +0100

2headedsnake:

Isaac Cordal - ‘Cement Bleak’

Isaac Cordal uses strainers not as kitchen tools but as a means to create street art.

"The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that..."

Sat, 04 May 2013 11:10:44 +0100

“

The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me.

If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.

”

- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love (via commovente)

Photo

Sat, 04 May 2013 11:05:36 +0100

2 fully completed art projects + paperwork all handed in right on deadline = feeling great

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:07:49 +0100

2 fully completed art projects + paperwork all handed in right on deadline = feeling great

theonlymagicleftisart: (untitled by Andrea tb)

Wed, 01 May 2013 22:43:30 +0100

theonlymagicleftisart:

(untitled by Andrea tb)

luckybystander: Hellfire

Wed, 01 May 2013 22:41:51 +0100

luckybystander:

Hellfire