Japanese words that don't exist, but should
In The Meaning of Tingo
, author Adam Jacot de Boinod admits that -- in researching his book -- he found many unusual foreign words that he could not, in the end, verify.
Two of my favorite of these unverified words were attributed to Japanese:
, which means ‘to look worse after a haircut’
Ariga-meiwaku, which is ‘an act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude’.
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Rolf Potts |
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Weird word of the week
Comments (3)
Might I suggest some Russian?
1) everybody talks about schaudenfreude as if only the Germans could think of such a diabolical word. The Russians have "zloradost" - which means, roughly "taking joy in evil/the misfortune of others". Pretty much the same thing.
The Russian word for midget is "Liliput"
To play someone for a fool is "veshat lapsha na ushi" - hang noodles from their ears.
and the word for ladybug is "bozhya korovka" or "God's little cow"
And the hard disk on your computer is called a "Winchester" (ok "Vinchester") because they were originally created using vacuum tubes that had the approximate gauge of rifles.
Posted by Dan McMinn | October 27, 2006 5:18 PM
Posted on October 27, 2006 17:18
A Russian equivalent (except without the gratitude part) to Ariga-meiwaku is: "Medvezhiya usluga," which literally means: "a bear's help."
Posted by Anna | June 11, 2007 3:37 PM
Posted on June 11, 2007 15:37
I believe the word is arigata meiwaku, not ariga meiwaku.
I'm not sure about age otori, though.
Posted by Tony | December 18, 2007 5:50 PM
Posted on December 18, 2007 17:50