by Jag Bhalla
At pure lung: working hard (Spanish, Latin America)
With liver and brains spilled on the ground: to do one’s utmost (Chinese)
Wasteful with one’s health: burn the candle at both ends (German)
To have no time to die: to be overwhelmed by work (Hindi)
Break a bone: make a special effort (Japanese)
Make one’s own body into powder: worked to death (Japanese)
No time for a seat to get warm: very busy (Japanese)
Break the horns: work very hard (Spanish)
Dance on one’s head: work hard (Spanish)
To have moustaches: a man of energy (Spanish, Latin America)
Get with one’s own hump: earn by one’s own sweat (Russian)
TO NOT WORK HARD
To sell oil: to goof off, to loaf (Japanese)
To not do a dry fig: to be idle (Italian)
To show your lamp to the sun
Hindi: to waste time, do something useless
To make a worker’s monument: to be lazy (German)
Air man: one with no work or income (Yiddish)
A codfish: a lazy person (Spanish, Puerto Rico)
To gulp down flies: to not work hard (French)
To make blue: to take the day off (German)
A fan* in one’s left hand: an easy life with no work (Japanese)
By not wetting one’s hands: without any effort (Japanese)
To count stars: to twiddle your thumbs (Russian)
To break [one’s] chair: to be very idle (Hindi)
TO NOT WORK WELL OR NOT WORK ANYMORE
To drown in a glass of water: incompetent (Spanish)
To plough in the sea: to do something useless (Spanish, Mexico)
To throw water into the sea: to be useless (Spanish)
To be a piece of meat with eyes: to be useless (Spanish)
A Buddhist priest for three days: a quitter (Japanese)
To serve neither God nor the devil: to be useless (Spanish, Mexico)
To be worth a mushroom: to be worthless (Spanish, Chile)
To be worth potatoes: to be worthless (Spanish, Mexico)
Not even to dress saints: worthless (Spanish)
Poop on a stick: worthless (Yiddish)
Thinner than water: worthless (Hindi)
Ganges of dung: a useless person, complete fool (Hindi)
He’s good only for a fowl sacrifice: useless (Yiddish)
Like a deaf man at a wedding party: a useless person (Arabic)
Big shoe: an incompetent person (Italian)
To comb the giraffe: to waste effort (French)
To break firewood: to waste effort (Russian)
To sift dust: to waste effort (Hindi)
Pedaling in yogurt: ineffective (French)
To spread bean paste on something: to make a mess (Japanese)
Too many saints ruin the temple: too many cooks spoil the broth (Hindi)
The bath house soap bowl is missing: chaos (Arabic)
Shoelace ironer: too much attention to detail (Russian)
A pea counter: one overly concerned with details (German)
A mouse milker: one overly concerned with details (German)
Sewn with a hot needle: done carelessly (German)
To show your lamp to the sun: to waste time, do something useless (Hindi)
A poor dancer is impeded by his own balls: a bad workman blames his tools (Russian)
For an unskilled dancer the courtyard is uneven: a bad workman blames his tools (Hindi)
Painting little bars: unemployed (Spanish, Colombia)
Reduced to a neck: to be fired (Japanese)
To have to take a hat: forced to resign (German)
Out to plant cabbage: retired, old (French)
TO INGRATIATE
Foot licker: a sycophant (Italian)
A sock sucker: a sycophant (Spanish, Peru)
To lick someone’s heels: to behave in a servile manner toward someone (Russian)
Climb on the dragon and get close to the phoenix: ingratiate oneself (Chinese)
To grind sesame: to flatter (Japanese)
To pat over the wool: to flatter, ingratiate (Russian)
Under the sleeve: money under the table, a bribe (Japanese)
A silver shoe: a bribe (Hindi)
THE BOSS, THE MAN, THE WOMAN
Armchair: position of power (Italian)
Mister sainted mother: the big boss (Italian)
The big head: the boss (Italian)
To cut the cake: to take control (Spanish, Chile)
To wear the pants well placed: to impose authority (Spanish)
To tighten one’s pants: to make one’s authority felt (Spanish, Costa Rica)
To have the frying pan by the handle: to be in charge (Spanish)
To use someone with one’s chin: to order someone around (Japanese)
The rabbi’s wife: a pompous woman (Yiddish)
A company director’s stomach: a paunch (Japanese)
The eye of a typhoon: a leading figure (Japanese)
A thick stick: an important person, boss (Spanish, Chile)
A fat fish: a big shot, head honcho (Spanish)
POOR OR BROKE
To be in the green: to be broke (Italian)
Living by sheltering from the rain and dew: in poverty (Japanese)
One’s mouth dries up: in poverty (Japanese)
To lack a straw for a toothpick: not have a penny (Hindi)
No tartar on the teeth: in poverty (Hindi)
An ant milker: a miser (Arabic, Syrian)
Cleaner than a frog’s armpit: flat broke (Spanish)
To not have a single radish: flat broke (French)
One who lives on watery lentils: a poor person (Hindi)
Grass at a village site: a poor man, easily trampled on (Hindi)
To drink a cup of broth: to go broke (French)
One’s legs stick out: to exceed one’s income (Japanese)
One’s pocket is lonely: short of money (Japanese)
One’s pocket is cold: short of money (Japanese)
To become naked: to go broke (Japanese)
A wheel of fire: in financial straits (Japanese)
To be duck: to be broke (Spanish, Peru)
Iron rooster: stingy person (Chinese)
Like a poor person’s funeral: quickly (Spanish, Colombia)
CHEAP OR STINGY
Fine words don’t feed cats: talk is cheap (Italian)
To have holes in your hands: to be cheap (Italian)
To walk with one’s elbows: to be stingy (Spanish, Cuba)
To crow: to take advantage of financially (Spanish, Argentina)
Goose: a freeloader (Spanish, Colombia)
Not eat an egg so as to not waste the shell: be miserly (Spanish, Mexico)
To walk with one’s elbows
Spanish: cheap, stingy
To live on a large foot
German: to live very well
Not eat a banana so as to not throw out the peel: be miserly (Spanish, Mexico)
Worth a mushroom: worthless (Spanish, Chile)
Worth potatoes: worthless (Spanish, Mexico)
For an apple and an egg: very cheaply (German)
A cucumber: very cheaply (Hindi)
To light one’s fingernail: to lead a frugal life (Japanese)
To have a baby’s hand: to be very tight with money (Spanish, Chile)
To be hard of the elbow: to be stingy (Spanish, Dominican Republic)
Eat vegetables and fear no creditors, rather than eat duck and hide: proverb (Hebrew)
The painful one: the check, bill (Spanish)
So cheap that she even farts inward: extremely stingy (Finnish)
So miserly that if a fly fell in his tea, he would fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away: not an idiom, but a worthy inclusion, and all that in just two Hindi words! (Hindi)
RICH/LUXURIOUS/GENEROUS
To make one’s butter: to make lots of mone
y (French)
To put butter in the spinach: to improve one’s living standard (French)
To cost the skin on one’s buttocks: to make a fast buck (French)
To have hay in your boots: to feather your nest (French)
To have one’s whole hand in the ghee [butter]: to be wealthy (Hindi)
To have cheerful pockets: to be wealthy (Spanish, Mexico)
One’s pocket is warm: wealthy (Japanese)
One’s breast is deep: generous (Japanese)
To live like God in France: to live in luxury (German)
To live like a maggot in bacon: to live in luxury (German)
To live on a large foot: to live in luxury (German)
To earn oneself a golden nose: to make a lot of money (German)
To have an elephant swing at the gate: to live in luxury (Hindi)
To fly pigeons: to have no cares, live in luxury (Hindi)
A wool sock well stuffed: a nice nest egg (French)
Chickens do not peck the money: to roll in money (Russian)
To be stuffed up, to be stuffed with: to be very wealthy (Yiddish)
A rich man has no need of character: proverb (Hebrew)
TO SPEND MONEY
To cost a candy: expensive (French)
To cost an eye of the face: expensive (Spanish)
Salty: pricey, expensive (Spanish, South America)
To throw the house out the window: to spend lavishly (Spanish)
Scratch the pocket: spend reluctantly (Spanish)
The pure potato: cold hard cash (Spanish, Colombia)
Despised metal: money (Russian)
He should grow like an onion with his head in the ground.
Yiddish: go take a hike
chapter twelve
FOOD & DRINK
Give it to someone with cheese
MY PEOPLES WERE INVOLVED in a culinary coup d’état in 2001. It was a great year for Anglo-Indian food. Robin Cook, then the British Foreign Secretary, said in a speech that “chicken tikka masala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.”1
This momentous event addressed a couple of my food and identity issues. First, Britain isn’t exactly respected for its national food. Non-Brits usually think of fish and chips and perhaps the full British breakfast (complete with black pudding—which is fried pig’s blood sausage). So chicken tikka masala is a big step forward. Second, I’m a great consumer and promoter and provider of Indian food. I particularly enjoy breaking the bread of my ancestors with companions (at events known as Naan Nights). And the culinary influence of my ancestors isn’t limited to Britain—one of Germany’s most popular fast-food dishes is now the curry-wurst (more on Germans and their love of processed meats to follow).
As Robin Cook was pointing out, inclusion-and-fusion is a process often used by the British. It certainly applies to language as well as to food. Henry Hitchings, in his exuberant book The Secret Life of Words, estimates that English has added much flavor by gobbling up words from 350 other languages.2 India has also practiced inclusion-and-fusion. I was a little shocked to discover that dishes we think of as characteristically Indian aren’t entirely so. Curries rely on chilies that were brought to India by the Portuguese. Not a discovery that curried* favor with me.
Even the word Indian is of European origin. It was in use in England long before it was used in connection with the land of my ancestors. India originally meant any foreign land.3 Hence it made sense, from a Eurocentric point of view, to speak of an East Indies and a West Indies, and to call the inhabitants of the Americas Indians. England and English are also so called for Eurocentric reasons. The word England is derived from the land of the Angles, who were a tribe of early invaders from what is present-day Germany and the northern Netherlands.
Getting back to food and national dishes…
For Italians we immediately think of pasta (though that is thought to have originated in China). Italians have particularly colorful language for their 500-plus varieties. Some of their entertaining translations include the familiar: worms (thin is vermicelli and thick is vermicelloni), little strings (spaghetti), spirals (fusili; same root as fusilier, or spiral), little tongues (linguini, or flattened spaghetti), knots of wood (gnocchi). But also the less familiar: little fingers (ditalini), little beards (barbina), moustaches (mostaccioli), little ears (orecchiette), half moons (mezzalune), pandas (fantolioni), butterflies (farfalle), infesting weed (gramigna), and, finally, the alarming priest chokers or strangled priests (strozzapreti)!
For the Japanese we think of sushi, though we often misconstrue that to mean raw fish. It actually refers to the fermented rice that the fish (or vegetables or meat) sits on. The Japanese take that rice very seriously. As Trevor Corson reveals in his delicious book The Zen of Fish, it can take a sushi chef in Japan up to two years just to learn how to get the rice right. American sushi chefs can learn the whole shebang, rice and all, in 12 weeks. Corson also reveals that sushi is like pasta, in that it probably originated in what is now part of China.
For the Spanish we think of paella and tapas. The word tapas means “lids” or “covers.” Its use in relation to food supposedly derives from the practice of covering sherry glasses in Andalusia with thin slices of bread or meat to keep the flies off. A related recently invented word from The Daily Candy Lexicon is crapas, used to describe the terrible finger food served at public relations events.4
We’ve seen how language can provide a window into various ethnic stomachs. Let’s see what other aspects of food culture idioms can shed light on:
For Germans, we perhaps think of their obsession with processed meats. While English speakers might be living in the lap of luxury or living the life of Riley, a similarly fortunate and content German prefers to be “living like a maggot in bacon.” Processed meats also feature prominently in their expression for sulking, which is “to play the insulted liver sausage” and for “giving special treatment,” which is “to fry a bologna sausage.” Having given in too much to the temptations of their processed meats, dieting Germans can be described as engaging in the wonderfully graphic “de-baconing.”
Though it is said that man cannot live by bread alone, she can use bread to ensure that she is not always alone. In English we break bread with friends (incidentally, that is what the word companion means: com (“with”) + pan (“bread”) = “bread fellow”). Similarly, social Russians “carry bread and salt” or “meet with bread and salt,” and Arabs simply “take salt with you.” And to further emphasize the perceived benefits of social eating, Arabs have a proverb that says, “An onion shared with a friend tastes like roast lamb.”
Speaking of food, evolutionary psychologists have suggested that the absence of any effective form of refrigeration was critical to our early moral development. Let’s say that you’re an early humanoid hunting and gathering on the African savannah and you strike it lucky: You come across a huge beast and you manage to kill it. It yields far more meat than anyone involved in the hunt or their families can possibly consume. How do you get the most benefit of your excess meat without a fridge? Without anywhere to store it? The smartest of our deep ancestors would have stored their excess meat in the bodies and minds of others (not just their own kin). Provided those benefiting from your largesse could possibly repay your generosity in the future, that was the best thing you could do with excess meat. Groups of early humans who developed stable relationships and practiced this sort of reciprocal altruism were in a better position to prosper and multiply. Some of these adaptive benefits survive in our moral instincts today—even in forms of altruism that aren’t so nakedly reciprocal. Refer, for example, to the earlier quotations from Adam Smith’s first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (see Chapter 11). Italians have a great
word for gifts with strings attached that translates as “hairy generosity.”
Speaking of food sufficiency, when we eat to our heart’s content, Russians like “butter over the heart” and the Japanese more audibly “beat a belly drum.” Meanwhile, “eating twice a day” is enough for Hindi speakers. For motivation, we can use a carrot-and-stick approach, but Germans express their preference for less nutritious incentives, requiring “sugar bread and whip.” When we think that we are the center of the universe or the bee’s knees, an equally egocentric Spaniard thinks she “is the hole in the center of the cake.” And where we seek to have our cake and eat it too, the French prefer to “save the goat and the cabbage.” Saving by “reheating the cabbage” for an Italian means dis-charmingly to attempt to revive a lapsed love affair. For the Dutch, to be enjoying good food is both sacred and grossly sacrilegious; it’s like “an angel urinating on your tongue.”
Along the lines of alcoholic associations, we think of Germany with beer, France with fine wines, Japan for sake, and Russia for vodka, any of which can lead to getting drunk. An inebriated Frenchman would be “buttered,” a Spaniard “breast fed,” a German could be either simply “blue,” or perhaps “have a monkey sit on him.” A not-so-great Dane might “have carpenters,” implying that they were banging in his head. Italian idioms attest to the strength of the national relationship with coffee: Espresso is a “shrunken coffee,” and liquor is “corrected coffee.” As to the Italian understanding of corrected expectations, there is a proverb that warns, “You can’t have a full barrel and a drunk wife.”
Let’s see what other enticing morsels of culinary culture are revealed by international idioms involving food.
COFFEE & TEA
Shrunken coffee: very strong espresso (Italian)
To do a java: to have a party (French)
