best foreign words in the world!

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my friend just sent me a letter to tell me about a czech word that has no immediate english translation: "litost". litost is the pain and anguish one feels when confronted with one's own misery. for example: "the terrible litost that accompanies 'hypercelibacy'" (the 'hypercelibat' person sees his two friends getting a bit intimate --> experiences litost.)

this reminded me of another cool czech word: "defenestration". it is the act of throwing someone out of a window. (at least i was told it was a czech word. it would make sense, because there is a long history of czech leaders being assassinated by defenestration)

― minna, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Defenestration of Prague! But is it really a Czech word? I thought it had Latin roots, from the word for window.

― rosemary, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, that's what it looks like... oh well, i guess the czechs can still have it since they get to use it the most :)

― minna, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Defenestration is an English word from the Latin word "fenestra," window. I was taught it meant jumping out a window, so I guess it just means leaving a window rather than jumping/being thrown out.

― Maria, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i'm a big fan of 'schadenfreude' (sp?), proven by the fact that i'd rather have you speak to a German on the subject than tell you what it means.

― Dave M., Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

To further the Deutschphilia, I like schvaunstukker (sp?). (re: Young Frankenstein.)

― Leee, Wednesday, 26 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

und wieder...
The German words for cherry and peach schnapps.....Kirschschnapps and Pfirsichschnapps. That's 8 and 6 consonants in a row, respectively. Are there any words, in any language, with more than 8 consonants in a row?

― MarkH, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

My fave German word is "Schnellzugzuschlagschein" ......... which is something about a ticket for a hi-speed train

― C J, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If you like these, there's a whole book of them called They Have A Word For It. Of the examples there my favourite is 'Feierabend' - a German word for a 'festive mood at the end of the day'. Which obviously comes after 'tirare la carretta' - 'to slog through everyday dirty work'. Also useful to adopt might be the Japanese 'koro' - 'the belief that one's penis is shrinking'. But the most poignant (much used in Will Ferguson's novel Happiness) is 'razbliuto' - 'feeling for an ex-lover' in Russian...

― Archel, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Milan Kundera writes at length about 'Litost' in _The Book of Laughter and Forgetting_.

― alext, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Litost is cute. One kinda wants to hug a person feeling it. Maybe I'd use the word 'doucement' on them, like the checkout girl at Euralille did to me when I was getting in a tizzy with my centimes. It means 'gently does it' but it sounds caressing. After that it would be back to the stubli for some geschnetzeltes wildschwein 'forster art' in feiner wildrahmsauce. And chips.

― Gordon, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Always had a soft spot for esprit d'escalier

― Matt, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

sauerkraut

― queenoftheharpies, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

that's what i was going to say! (do you see what i did there...)

― mark s, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Le Monde! (did you see what I did there?)

― jel --, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'ano' is czech for 'yes' and sounds like 'I know' in a scots accent. so, for a while, you think everyone who is just agreeing with you is being a smartarse.

confusingly it is often shortened to 'no' to mean 'yes.'

― RJG, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember reading that book with Litost in it. It was kinda cute at the time with the little guy getting crapper and crapper on the violin (i think) but it struck a chord with me, and I was just thinking about it the other day when I went sailing for the first time ever. No matter what I did, the boat kept tipping over wildly and I kept getting clonked in the face by the boom, so I thought, sod it, and tossed myself off instead.

― stevie mitch, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

le crepuscule

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm uneasy with Kundera['s books]. He reminds me of Kieslowski somehow in his modernism. One can always imagine the quick cut to a longhair listening to his walkman too loud and a linen-shirted Milan scrunching up his nose. His talent, maybe, is to flatter our conventional wisdom by making it feel quietly revolutionary.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

discombobulate (i can do english words. HAH!)

― nathalie, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ACHTUNG!!!!!!

― Norman Phay, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

discombobulate is actually American slang, so it's not in my fancy big Oxford dictionary

― Gordon, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

trans. To disturb, upset, disconcert. So discombobulated ppl. a.; discombobulation, upset, embarrassment.

1834 Sun (N.Y.) 21 Mar. 2/3 May be some of you don't get discombobracated. 1838 J. C. NEAL Charcoal Sk. 14 While you tear the one, you'll discombobberate the nerves of the other. 1839 Spirit of Times 16 Mar. 24/2 Finally, Richmond was obliged to trundle him, neck and heels, to the earth, to the utter discombobulation of his wig. 1926 R. FROST Let. 11 Feb. (1964) 178, I put my own discombobulation first to lead up unnoticably to yours. 1943 Sat. Rev. Lit. 23 Jan. 9/1 President Roosevelt's sarcastic reply, when asked as to the wisdom of raising an army too large to be supplied from the home-front, in terms of ‘discombobulating the domestic economy’. 1957 M. MILLAR Soft Talkers ii. 21 It seems as though we were getting all discombobulated for nothing. 1962 R. P. BLACKMUR in E. Hubler et al. Riddle of Shakespeare's Sonnets 138 The hues attract, draw, steal men's eyes, but penetrate, discombobolate, amaze the souls or psyches of women. 1970 ‘E. QUEEN’ Last Woman I. 17, I don't want you people to be in any way discombobulated.

― Kris, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

sprezzatura

― bryan, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the sound of babaganouj almost as much as the taste (although I also see it spelled as two words sometimes). Eggplant/aubergine, num num!

― Hunter, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pince-nez!!!!!!

― turner, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Gordon, American is a foreign language TO ME so :-P

― nathalie, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

smegma breath - try trnaslating that one!

― Queen I am neither Buffy nor the Messiah G, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Fünf gegen einen

― Chris, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

lao-lao

it's Thai for clumsy person, it's what the boys in the bar were calling me after my accident.

― chris, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Is that what it was called, Chris?

I enjoy zeitgeist for its simplicity and bright sound, if you like.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Pychon was of the opinion that leaping through a ground-floor window would constitute transfenestration.

― nabisco%%, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually Cabbage, "lao-lao" means big scary throat stabbing person, cos we warned them about you

― David, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

n: well, strictly speaking, Zoyd was.

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

"kur-ke-van" means belly button in hebrew. it`s actually the most offical word for this place. the most common one is "pu-pik" which is better, i think!

― sivan ravid, Friday, 2 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Current favourite Swedish words: tack, feskarn, tonfisk, snygg, pojke, barn, kreditkort, potatis... sod it, the whole darn language is great!

― Madchen, Monday, 5 August 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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