Comparisons in your language

[wolferin]

In every language some (human) features or states are compared to different subjects, animals, etc. To what and how do you compare in your language - fast as..., beautiful as...?

Some comparisons in Bulgarian:

When we want to say somebody is very drunk, we say:
drunk as a (Don) Cossack
drunk as a plank
drunk as a mattock
drunk as a pick-mattock
drunk as a swine/pig
drunk as a digger

When somebody is drinking too much:
He drinks as a (Don) Cossack.
He drinks/sucks as a leech.
He drinks/sucks as a grass-snake.

When somebody is very beautiful:
She is beautiful as a picture.
He is handsome as an angel.
The child is beautiful as a little angel.

When somebody is very ugly:
He/she is ugly as the death
He is ugly as a vampire.
She is ugly as a plague.
She is ugly as Baba Yaga (Baba Yaga's granddaughter).
(Baba Yaga - Granny Yaga is a mythical personage - ugly old woman, a witch, sometimes flying with a broom and living in the forest.)

When somebody is very wise:
wise as an eagle-owl

When somebody or something is very fast:
fast as an arrow
fast as a rabbit

When somebody is very handy:
handy as a magician
handy as a juggler

When somebody or something is very slow:
slow as a turtle
slow as a snail

When somebody is walking or doing something very slow:
He is dragging as a (swain) gut.

When somebody is very stupid/dull:
He is dull as a log.
He is dull as a galosh.
She is stupid/dull as a sheep.
She is dull as a duck (goose).

When somebody is very simple (in the meaning a boor, with bad manners):
He is simple as a cattle.

When somebody is very strong/robust:
strong as a bull
strong as a bear

When somebody is very healthy:
healthy as a rock
healthy as a stone
healthy as a nail (tack)
healthy as a horse

When somebody is very hungry:
hungry as a wolf
hungry as a dog

When somebody is very stubborn:
stubborn as a donkey

When somebody doesn't like to step back of his position:
He has stuttered himself as a donkey on a bridge.

When somebody is very slender, with good figure:
slender as a poplar

When somebody is very fat/heavy:
fat as a pig/swain
fat as a bear
fat/heavy as an elephant

When somebody is very brave:
brave as a lion

When somebody is very hairy:
hairy as a bear
hairy as a monkey

When somebody or something is very black:
black as a coal
about hair - black as an ebony
black as a stove

When somebody is with very dark/black skin:
He is black as a negro (Gipsy, Blackamoor, devil).

When somebody is blond, with very light hair:
He is blond as a Scandinavian (a Swede).

About the eyes and colors:
blue as the sky/cornflower
black as a night/coal
brown as a (brown) velvet (comes from this - it is considered the deep brown eyes are "mild" and their owners - goodhearted.)
brown as a chocolate
green as the grass
grey as lead
white as snow

When somebody is very coward:
coward as a rabbit

When somebody is singing very well:
singing as a nightingale/angel

When somebody is very wild/ferocious:
wild/ferocious as a beast

When somebody is very cunning:
cunning as a fox
cunning as a devil

When somebody is very evil:
He is evil as a dog. (He is like an evil dog.)
She is evil as a wasp.

When somebody is very hard-working:
He is hard-working as a bee.

When somebody is very tired:
tired as a dog

[Bartbär]

We americans have a wide variety of them, but I can't think of them all now so I'll post what comes to mind and perhaps add to it later, with some help from any fellow americans if they care to share some too, afterall I notice that even in different parts of the country we have different examples for things. Generally too we can be pretty "vulgar" in our descriptions, but I think that's what I love so much about it.

Someone who is drunk:
Drunk as a skunk (we like rhyming too sometimes. haha)

Beauty:
I've noticed a dumbing down of adjectives on this front: generally most americans use the term "hot" for both genders. He/She is hot. Oftentimes these are the only forms of expressing lust or attraction, but it also depends on the person. I haven't heard anyone give a noun to follow the adjective in a long time "beautiful as..." or otherwise.

When someone/someting is ugly:
Ugly as shit
Ugly as piss
Ugly as a cow

Wisdom:
Wise as an owl

When someone/something is fast:
As fast as (or faster then) a speeding bullet.

Hunger:
I'm trying to think of adjectives we use to describe someone who is hunger. But when one is hunger it is common to hear: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse"

I'll keep it short and sweet for now. Although I'd like to point out that we americans use the word "shit" as an adjective in almost everything, and not always as a means to express a negative. We also do the same with various other "vulgar" words.

[Deleted]

Aug 26, 2010 22:53:01 GMT 2 Bartbär said:

Hunger:
I'm trying to think of adjectives we use to describe someone who is hunger. But when one is hunger it is common to hear: "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse"

......and ran after the jockey too!! ;D

I will post some from here too,(when less sleepy and tired ) but the ones that come in my head now are from another country/culture and I kant bear not writing them here: ''mad as a cut snake'' , ''flat out like a lizard drinking'' , ''off like a bag of prowns in the sun'', etc. I hope some explaining will come from someone who belongs to this culture . ;D

[Arivse]

This is kinda funny topic, since in finland we have lots of these goofy comparisons

These comparisons change after where you live in finland, since we have lots of slangs, brogues or what ever you want to call them.

These comparisons don't rhyme or anything like that (well most of them don't, ofc there is some exceptions as allways)

I'll try to remember to write some of these up and in this topic when I'm sober, now its just too much, because I'm drunk as a cuckoo ;D

[wolferin]

Aug 26, 2010 22:53:01 GMT 2 Bartbär said:

Generally too we can be pretty "vulgar" in our descriptions, but I think that's what I love so much about it.

;D ;D ;D
I missed the vulgar.
It is General intellectual discussion thread, not a profane dictionary. (It's amazing how easy foreign "dirty" words are remembered. ;D ;D)

[Deleted]

Again some from ''the other culture'' pop in my mind, but I will try to resume to a few in my language : ''hungry as a wolf'' when guess what? hungry! ; ''sounding like a broken mill'' when someone is much too talkative; ''sitting like a cow'' when one is lazy..... Will get back to them when I remember more.

[Bartbär]

Tiina, thanks for reminding me of another one: here for when someone is too talkative, or more specifically repeats the same things over and over, we say "sounds like a broken record".

[Deleted]

We have that too, but I prefer the mill one. And that is because I prefer the old fashion ones, not the ones youngins use, mainly influenced by global influences. Also I remembered others , like: ''beautiful as a devil'' when you want to say that someone is not that handsome ; "dumb as the night'' when one is not clever; ''fits like a nut in the wall" when sth inapropiate is said or done; "'clear as daylight'' when you point a truth that is not understood by a person; ''you are looking like a turkey in the woods'' tis used in many situatios, especially when one do not get sth.

[kuusuru]

Okaaaaaaayyyyyy... Australian English is reknowned in the anglophone world for its slang, so... some of these may offend, so, if you're easily offended, best to hit the back button on your web browser now.


If someone/something is...

Ugly: "... was hit by the ugly stick."

Very Ugly: "Fell out of the ugly tree."

Hideously ugly: "Fell out of the ugly tree face first hitting every branch on the way down."

Ugly, but the stick/tree saying has already been used in the conversation: "... has a face like a smashed crab."

Someone has used one of the aforementioned insults on you, and you want a snappy comeback: "Yeah? Well if my dog was as ugly as you I'd shave its arse and teach it to walk backwards."

Busy: "Busier than a Beirut bricklayer."

Very busy: "Busier than a one-legged Riverdancer." (Irish dancer)

Useless: "As useful as tits on a bull."

Conspicuous: "Sticks out like dog's balls", "Like a shag on a rock."

Miserly: "Tighter than a fish's bum", "Wouldn't shout if a shark bit them".

Unscrupulous: "Lower than a snake's armpit."

Difficult to find: "As rare as hen's teeth."

Thirsty: "Dry as a pommie bath mat." (Pommie = Englishman)

Drunk: "Full as a goog." (good = egg)

Urgently need to use the bathroom: "Back teeth are floating."

Keen to do something: "Into that like a rat up a drainpipe."

Hungry: "Could eat a horse."

Very hungry: "Would eat a horse and chase the jockey too."

Starving: "Would eat the arse out of a low-flying duck."

Your car has great handling: "Sticks to the road like shit to a blanket."

Muscular: "Built like a brick shithouse."

[wolferin]

Anwend and Kuusuru wrote about hungry one - could eat a horse. ;D
We have similar, but eating a bigger animal. ;D
I'm so hungry, I'm gonna eat an elephant. ;D

I remember some other:

Somebody wondering without purpose - he is wondering as a fly without head.
Somebody very talkative - his parents had made him in a watermill.
Somebody very cheeky - cheeky like a horse fly.

[Deleted]

Aug 27, 2010 22:53:23 GMT 2 wolferin said:

Somebody wondering without purpose - he is wondering as a fly without head.

Here some without shame say to those people that ''he is spinning like a ball in a pan''. ;D

[Joe]

We do this thing too in Germany
The only things i can think of right now are:
Drunk as a dozen of russians;
As ugly as the night. <- Yeah, i dont like this comparison. I really like the night. I like every daytime, for that matter.

[Mighty Croc]

OK, as Germans have only one comparison for deadly drunk condition [the dozen of russians], we Russians have lots of so. But we have a quite different language, so the most popular is "someone's drunk into something". The most usable is, of course, "damn, I'm drunk into shit" - this means you're drunk as a dozen of russians and feel yourself like shit. There's even a joke list of the most popular comparisons [you should know Russian to understand all this crap, this only a very rough translation]:

A policeman is drunk into a detail.
A shoemaker is drunk into an inner sole.
A tailor is drunk into rags.
A glazier is drunk into glass pieces.
A carpenter is drunk into a plank.
A cabman - into an arc.
An undertaker is deadly drunk.
A pig-keeper woman - till the piglet's squeal
A football prayer is drunk till the out
A sewers worker - into shit
A cook - into a sausage
An electrician - till the log off
A mathematician - into zero
A gym coach - till he lays
A medic - till the pulse stops
A gay - into ass
A physician - till the loss of strength [in Russian, the term "strength" in physics means also not "strength" but "resistance", so it's a word hint - a physician is so drunk that he even stops to resist to anything]
A chemist - till the settling-out

and many more...

[Deleted]

I feel even more sorry now I never got to learn more russian. ;D But these are funny enough to ''smirk like a cow at a fair'', hahhahaaa....

Edit: the ''cow'' is what i use, traditionally it is ''smirking like a dumb lady at a fair''. ;D

[Joe]

Well, in Germany we have many accents and languages, and the traditions (especially when it comes to drinking) also differ a lot.
I can only speak for my own cultural background, and here in Ostfriesland the drinking habits are one of the most extreme in Germany. Except for maybe Bavaria, but nobody likes them so i wont go into that any further *g* .
I just went to a party, where one guy drank at least 5 Litres of beer and 0,7l vodka with orange juice. He was still able to talk perfectly.

The more common comparisons like "Stockbesoffen", "Hackebreit", or "duun" in Plattdüütsch, our own language, are impossible for me to translate into english. A pity. Maybe.