Interesting foreign words

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I saw a German word that seemed funny to me: Backpfeifengesicht - translated as a "slappable face", or a face "in need of a slap". Thinking of a face that way was weird at first, but before long, I was looking around my workplace and seeing a few people who fit that description!

Do any of you run across words in other languages that you find odd or interesting, or make you think in a different way?

Have often wished that there was a dope slap emoticon for this and other sites. Or one in real life.

I do run into words like that. Foreign words for something we don't have a word for. And English has its share of words lacking in other languages. There was best selling book some years devoted to that very subject.


In Japanese they have the word "obi" which means "an imperfection that makes something perfect". Originally used for things like hand made pottery and tea cups it some deliberate flaw that showed it was handmade and not stamped out by a machine. But you think of other things it could be applied to as well.

"Faux pas". It literally means "false step" in French. It's normally used by English-speaking people to describe a really bad mistake, usually one made while socializing, which I'm sure we all know too well about.

I had an English teacher in grade 9 who would say "nay pa!" instead of "no!" to a student. I guess that's why he wasn't a French teacher.