Ill start:
“Me cago en tus muertos” - ill shit all over your dead relatives. Spanish.
Teletubbyzurückwinker.
Someone that waves back at the Teletubbies.
This is by far the best one.
No harsh words or vulgarity but lots of emotional damage.
Schnitzelkind. Breaded-veal kid (wienerschnitzel / milanesa). Basically a kid so ugly, that the parents needed to put a schnitzel around his neck so that at least the dogs would play with him.
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Mieren neuker
Heya. I’m an American, and I’ve got to say thank you. I seriously look forward to calling someone a “ball violin” in English, but if fully intend to add klootviool and and klootzak to my day to day swear bank. Those are so satisfying to say!
Just don’t forget that the “oo” is pronounced as the “oh” in “oh shit” and not like the “oo” in “cool” or “mood”. Same for the “a” in “zak”. It’s closer to “ahhh” as in “oooohh and ahhh” or “pasta” than it is to the “a” in “back”
Bravo! A perfect write-up. You’re making us proud.
Nice overview! I do not have any proof of this, but I think “Godverdomme”, which is still very common, is a bit unique because rather that God damning it or -you, it translates to God Damn Me.
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I also quite like the word ‘droeftoeter’, meaning a sad/depressing person. The closest thing would be the word ‘loser’ in English.
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‘Sad trombone’ would be an apt translation, as the sound of refers to is exactly like the meaning of the insult.
In Quebec French, people sometimes say of someone who’s not particularly bright:
“His mom rocked him/her too close to the wall.”
It’s just so… vivid and random.
A strong insult in french would be to tell that someone has been “fini à la pisse”.
I don’t know how to translate that but it would means that their dad did not have enough sperm so he used urine to conceive them.
Oh cool, we have a very similar one in German: “His/her swing stood too close to the wall.”
Bizarre j’ai jamais entendu ça…
C’est bien connu en France:
Il a été bercé trop près du mur.
Mieux vaut tard que jamais pour l’ajouter à mon arsenal d’insulte 😁
Du hast doch nicht alle Tassen im Schrank - German, you don’t have all your cups in the drawer.
Telling someone he is stupid via comparison to cups. Why? Who knows.
Reminds me of ones like “You’re one fry short of a Happy Meal”, or “You’ve lost some marbles”. They generally imply that you’ve lost or are missing some mental faculties.
It’s like saying somebody is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
My favorite way to say that somebody is stupid is to say “Er ist dumm wie drei Meter Feldweg”, translates to “he’s as dumb as three meters (a bit more than 9 yards) of dirt road”.
Storing cups in drawers, huh.
“Schrank” is not really a drawer. Translating it as “cupboard” would be more appropriate, I think.
Ah, maybe. My vocabulary for kitchen furniture is a bit unclear sometimes what equates to what.
Schrank would be a box with doors and several levels of storage inside.
Very Belgian: He doesn’t have all his fries in the same bag / Il n’a pas toutes ses frites dans le même sachet
Meaning that he’s/she’s dumb or confused :D
Similar to “He’s one can short of a six pack”
The English equivalent being, “She is several chicken nuggets short of a happy meal”
A few sandwiches short of a picnic.
A few cards short of a deck.
The German equivalent is “Not all cups in the cupboard”
The Australian equivalent is “a few snags (sausages) short of a barbie (barbeque)”
Here are a few Austrian ones:
“Häferl” (Cup): someone with anger management issues
“Du rüttelst am Watschenbaum” (You are shaking the slap tree): I’m close to deliver the fruit of said tree to you.
“Ohrwaschlkaktus” (Ear cactus): Someone with large, protruding ears
“Saubauch” (Hog belly): A way of telling someone that they are fat and dumb at the same time. But in a nice way.
Calling a male a “nephew” in Chinese 契弟 kai dai is calling them a male prostitute.
Usually it doesn’t mean target male has actually been used sexually, but commonly used for general belittlement.
This term comes from ancient times: Traveling businessmen who would take a young boy with them for sexual use, but if anyone on the road or destination asked who the boy was, the business man would euphemistically explain “He’s my nephew”
契弟 kai dai is commonly translated as “nephew” but it means “adopted brother”
Oh, I’ve several. Irish people love a good curse.
Go mbrise an diabhal do dhá chois May the devil break your legs
Go ndéana an diabhal dréimire do chnámh do dhroma May the devil make a ladder out of your spine
Go n-imí an droch aimsir leat That the bad weather leaves with you
Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat May the cat eat you and may the devil eat the cat
And my personal favourite: Lá breá ag do chairde, dod adhlacadh May your friends have a fine day, burying you
Brazilian portuguese tends to lack impactful phrases, but is full of single curse words. A big portion of them a clear example of how much negative bias there is culturally against certain groups (gay men, women in general, disabled), unfortunately :/
One that isn’t often used, but that I almost always laugh loud whenever I hear, is “Enfia uma dentadura no cu e sorria pro caralho”, which roughly translates into “Stick a denture up your asshole and smile at the dick”. For when simply saying “go fuck yourself” isn’t enough.
In polish, calling people with the neutral gender. It’s a grave insult which implies lack of agency and dehumanisation, and thank to some rightwinger assholes in parliament is also a specific transphobic insult now.
While in english it’s completely normal thing to say if you’re not sure of a person’s gender.
So definitely not my “favourite”, i would never said this to anyone in polish and i occasionally get a hiccup of misgendering someone in english because of that, but interesting from language point of view.
In polish, calling people with the neutral gender…While in english it’s completely normal thing to say if you’re not sure of a person’s gender.
Maybe I misunderstand, but you should never call someone “it” in English, except for animals and babies. Calling someone “it” is considered dehumanizing in English.
Yes, what i meant that in english you call people in 3rd person “them”, “they” regardless of their gender, but in polish neutral gender would always be “it”. That’s why it’s so insulting to use it despite it is gramatically existing. Polish had pronouns literally build in every noun, verb and adjective.
Is it kind of like calling someone “it” as an insult in English?
Pretty much yes, the closest thing that would be.
I’d say so, and I’ve seen it used in the same transphobic contexts.
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The neutral gender is perfectly grammatical in polish, just it was never used for people other than small babies, i seen some effort to use it in literature for gender fluid or genderless people but it’s rare and don’t get positive reviews. It might catch some day though, i don’t know.
The disapproving and insulted look of a Canadian when you’ve done something so stupid that they can’t even apologize for it.
It’s when there’s no apology or jokes, just the look, that you know you’ve become the stupidest fucker north of these here prairies and bears ya know.
In French, “pisse-vinaigre” or vinegar pisser, for someone that complains about everything
Neat! In Dutch we have azijnpisser/azijnzeiker which means the exact same thing.
Same in Dutch: azijnzeiker (azijn = vinegar, zeiker = pisser). So that one does translate well (but not to English :))
In Bulgaria we have the very creative insult „You’re as sharp as an edge on a round table”, which I find pretty amusing
Cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, a caricature of an American southern gentleman, comes pretty close when he describes another character as “about as sharp as a bowling ball”
Wow so much lost in translation. I grew up with dubbed looney tunes, never knew he was supposed to be a gentleman let alone that it had a regional flavour. For me it was just a quirky rooster.
“I piss in your mother’s death”
Alternatively, “May Stalin fuck you”
And yes, I live in Eastern Europe.
May Stalin fuck you
Please share how to say this
Fută-te-ar Stalin
Pronounced: Foot-uh-tea-are Stalin
Congrats! You can swear in Romanian now!
My personal favourites from Finnish.
“Ei ole kaikki muumit Muumilaaksossa” “Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley” Used for people who are either stupid or lack sanity. There are other variants of this and Moomin one is not older than a couple of decades.
I find our version of Grammar Nazi pretty great. We call them comma fuckers.
“Ei voi kauhalla ottaa jos on lusikalla annettu” “You can’t take with a ladle if it was given with a spoon”. This refers also to a lack of something, usually a lack of intelligence or sense.
“Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley”
That’s totally something we’ll use. Thanks :D Also I’m stealing that. I’m stealing that insult and Americanizing it and you can’t stop me
Just be warned Moomins are a gateway to communism (Weird internet theory). Or at least to more Moomins. We literally have Moomin everything here.
In Denmark you have:
- Paragraph Knight - someone who cares too much about rules and regulations.
- Fly Fucker - someone who cares too much about something deeply insignificant.
In German there is “Paragraphenreiter” - Paragraph rider.
