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:

• Age-otori, 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’.

Some more weird words from around the world

It's been awhile since I've shared any of the weird words from Adam Jacot de Boinod's The Meaning of Tingo, so -- for travelers looking to wow (or just confuse) their international hosts -- here are a few choice global vocabularly nuggets:

• The Dutch word for skimming stones is plimpplamppletteren.
• Nakhur is Persian for a camel that won’t give milk until her nostrils are tickled.
• Cigerci is Turkish for a seller of liver and lungs.
• Madogiwazoku is Japanese for "window gazers" (i.e., office workers who sit at desks with little to do).
• Seigneur-terrasse is French for a person who spends much time but little money in a café.
• Tsuji-giri is Japanese for trying out a new sword on a passer-by (an example of the lack of respect for peasants by the Samurai).
• Torschlusspanik is German the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older.

One man's diamond is another man's paving tile...

In the United States and England, the four suits in playing cards are 'diamonds', 'hearts', 'clubs' and 'spades'. According to an entry on Adam Jacot de Boinod's blog, however, other...
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Should you need to swap wives in northern climes...

This week's weird word from The Meaning of Tingo is areodjarekput, which is an Inuit word that means "to exchange wives for a few days only". Naturally, as author Adam...
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Introducing: The weird word of the week

. Not long ago, I commented on an intriguing new book by Adam Jacot de Boinod, entitled The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World. Since...
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