242

What weird idioms/phrases does your language have? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

172 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In Finnish we have "kissanristiäiset" (literally means a cat's christening), which means some trivial and meaningless celebration/event.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You are correct on the pila thing, though it's old fashioned and kinda children's language.

Funilly enough and if I remember it correctly, a pila is a kind of throwable spear from the Roman times.

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Funilly enough and if I remember it correctly, a pila is a kind of throwable spear from the Roman times.

You might be into something here. The spear is pilum, and Portuguese reborrowed it as pilo. However Portuguese used to repurpose the gender change for specific types of something, specially for Latin neuter words: see ovo/ova, casco/casca, jarro/jarra, barco/barca. It's possible that the slang appeared this way, with people referring to their dicks as a type of spear. (It's kind of childish but fairly common; c.f. caralho from caraculum "small mast")

There's also another Latin pila meaning mortar, but it got inherited by Portuguese as pia "sink".

(IIRC pila-as-money is from a politician, Raul Pilla.)

this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023

242 points (99.6% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26924 readers

553 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.