Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

I don't make New Year's resolutions, as such, but one of my projects for the year is to improve my reading comprehension in French. Consequently, I'd like to start a thread to record interesting new French words I learn, similar to the thread we already have for English words. (I remember a word a lot better if I have to write it down, so hopefully typing a word will have the same effect.)

I know a couple of you also speak French or have studied French, but to make the thread more interesting, I'd like to open it up to all foreign languages. So Gio could contribute Chinese characters or words, Whistler could contribute Japanese words, Mico could contribute Russian words, etc. (If no one else is interested, I probably won't keep it up, because a thread just for my own amusement would be pretty boring, but I thought I'd start it just to see if there's interest.)

noirâtre (adj.) - blackish
bleuté (adj.) - bluish

I find it interesting that these two words have different suffixes (noir + -âtre and bleu + -té), while we use the same suffix for both in English (-ish). I don't know if one of them is irregular or if there's some pattern involved. (The -âtre suffix probably wouldn't play nice with the ending vowel of "bleu" so maybe the pattern is based on vowel vs. consonant endings?)

Gobemouche (n.) literally, "a fly swallower"
A French term of condescension meaning a credulous person who believes anything they hear, no matter how absurd.

despair.com/calendars.html , March 6, 2013

Retrouvailles (French): The happiness of meeting again after a long time.

http://bigthink.com/marriage-30/the-top ... h?page=all

皮肉、　ひにく
"hiniku"

This is the word for irony in Japanese. It's kind of weird because the kanji that make it up mean "skin meat." I guess it's ironic because the skin is the part you don't eat?

Whistler wrote:This is the word for irony in Japanese. It's kind of weird because the kanji that make it up mean "skin meat." I guess it's ironic because the skin is the part you don't eat?

It's like having ten thousand skins, when all you need is some meat.

One thing I am trying to do is speak Russian with my daughter on occasion. Sometimes I get stumped by words that I am surprised to find I don't know, so maybe I'll add those here as they occur.

Anyways, today we were cooking something that called for ginger and I was surprised that I somehow haven't needed to know that word in Russian ever. So I had to look it up:

Имбирь (imbir') - ginger
etymology: from the Latin name for the genus Zingiberaceae.

hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
the fear of long words

Hehe. I totally know some awesome Chinese characters. I would quiz you, but the computer I'm on doesn't have the Chinese character set installed.

Yarjka wrote:Имбирь (imbir') - ginger
etymology: from the Latin name for the genus Zingiberaceae.

Do you own a Russian etymological dictionary? (If so, I'm very jealous.)

mukhang Biyernes-santo
Tagalog, lit. "Good Friday face"
Someone with a "Good Friday face" is someone who looks sad, or, to use an English rough equivalent, has a "long face."
Biyernes-santo is Good Friday, and the term uses the grief associated with the death of Jesus Christ. It is very indicative of the Catholicism of most Filipinos.

Katya wrote:

Yarjka wrote:Имбирь (imbir') - ginger
etymology: from the Latin name for the genus Zingiberaceae.

Do you own a Russian etymological dictionary? (If so, I'm very jealous.)

I actually just referred to Wikipedia for that. Although Fasmer is readily available online. The entry for имбирь specifies that the word is first seen in the Domostroi and comes to Russian through the Polish "imbier", from the New High German word "Imber", which comes from the Latin and Greek ("Zingiber").

Yarjka wrote:

Katya wrote:

Yarjka wrote:Имбирь (imbir') - ginger
etymology: from the Latin name for the genus Zingiberaceae.

Do you own a Russian etymological dictionary? (If so, I'm very jealous.)

I actually just referred to Wikipedia for that. Although Fasmer is readily available online. The entry for имбирь specifies that the word is first seen in the Domostroi and comes to Russian through the Polish "imbier", from the New High German word "Imber", which comes from the Latin and Greek ("Zingiber").

Interesting. Thanks!

pierre angulaire (nf) - cornerstone (lit. "angular stone")

This phrase can mean a literal architectural cornerstone or a figurative cornerstone (i.e., the base or foundation of something).

I was trying to think of anything I could contribute, but the only language I remember at all (other than English) is ASL, and that doesn't translate well, nor is it tossed casually into English.

But then I remembered I've learned a few Latin phrases from Wodehouse. (Except since the main character is an idiot, I'm never sure if they're right.) The one that sticks out to me is "rem acu tetigisti," which I think means something like "you've got THAT right," though they gave the definition as something more like "you have touched the matter with a red-hot poker."

UffishThought wrote:I was trying to think of anything I could contribute, but the only language I remember at all (other than English) is ASL, and that doesn't translate well, nor is it tossed casually into English.

These don't have to be tossed casually into English, though. (In fact, I expect that most of them won't be that type of word or phrase.) But yes, the ASL would be hard to embed.

蝴蝶袖--Hu2 Die3 Xiu4
Literally, butterfly sleeves.
Colloquially, you know how the lady that conducts the music in Relief Society always has these big wobbling chunks of extra arm skin? I call them Relief Society arms. Chinese people call them 蝴蝶袖.

Giovanni Schwartz wrote:蝴蝶袖--Hu2 Die3 Xiu4
Literally, butterfly sleeves.
Colloquially, you know how the lady that conducts the music in Relief Society always has these big wobbling chunks of extra arm skin? I call them Relief Society arms. Chinese people call them 蝴蝶袖.

That is a really great word. (And, as always, it sounds nicer in Chinese.)

ringard (adj.)- tacky or cheesy
I'm sure I'll find lots of ways to use this one.

The Happy Medium wrote:ringard (adj.)- tacky or cheesy
I'm sure I'll find lots of ways to use this one.

That's safer than niggardly, which simply means "stingy" or "miserly." According to Wikipedia, this word is etymologically unrelated to the racial slur.