Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation

Oh, yes, another book reminded.

By gudgeons we mean Gobio Gobio fish - small and worthless. The idiom means chaotic mind, thinking of useless matters.

Head being filled with crap by someone?
Sh!t for brains?

Yes, but not by someone, only by yourself. It is a critical remark about one`s reasoning and behaviour too.

to hit sb in one`s most sensitive point.

Is it the equivalent of to hit somebody where it hurts? To do or say something to someone in order to upset them as much as possible and hurt somebody where they will feel it most?

Yes!
To stand on eyelashes.

I could say: not always - you can hit somebody in this point completely accidentaly.
Or this point can be e.g. his sense of responsibility and he will do something when he is not in mood, but it will not hurt him a lot :-)

To do one's best, strive hard for something.

Yes! (as usual) :):): What makes you so brilliant, I wonder? :):)

To have nerves.

Hahaha! Thanks for the compliment but there are many idioms ( and riddles ) I haven't found the answers to!


Of steel?

I didn`t say perfectly brilliant. Brilliant without perfectly, cause nobody is.

Yes, funny that I now realised your addition makes in fact the full idiom, shortened in the book.

The guitar! / So, the guitar!

Before I forget:
To sink under the ground.

To vanish without trace?


Is this similar to ' nie zawracaj mi gitary'? If it isn't I have no idea!

Yes, vanish.

No, Gitara! means approval: everything is OK.

Ok thanks, wouldn't have got that one.

So, you can use it from now on:

Are you ready?
Yes, I packed up everything.
So, guitar! Let`s go.

PS. Of course, I took it from the book, personally I never use it, it sounds a bit silly. :):)

Who is this speech to?

I have absolutely no idea!

It is a rhetorical question to express an annoyed surprise. Sth like: What are you talking about?

Sb is not a bad little herb.

Ok thanks for that :)
Does the herb one mean that somebody's quite a nice person? Not a bad old stick as we might say in the UK?

Yes and no: sb pretends a nice person when suddenly it is revealed he/she isn`t and then the comment is uttered. Herbs can have either healing or poisonous properties.

to pretend a holy person.

Just used it in another thread:
cry like a beaver.

Not ' pretend to be a holy person?' Doesn't quite make sense to me. Does it mean someone who tries to be someone else with the intention to deceive? Or someone who is holier than thou, a hypocrite?

As for cry like a beaver, to cry your heart out?

Yes and yes.

to hamster as a verb. But in Polish the noun hamster changes into a verb after adding a suffix. So, it might be better to say: to hamsteren.

Or to hamster away since one of the translations in English would be 'to squirrel away'...

Thanks, yours is better, it didn` t come to my mind. :) But it reveals the meaning too much.

To hide or put something away for later in a safe or secret place, often money for example.

Yes, except it`s not about money, but things which are considered of little worth.

Besides, last year I learnt its deeper meaning - to hide and then forget where you put it, just like real hamsters do in nature - they are able to collect 50 kilograms of grain and never use it all through winter.

to go onto the green grass

50 kilos? I would imagine it would take loads of hamsters to collect that amount!
Does the idiom about grass mean to lose a job, get fired?

No, one is enough. Various sources say from 15 to 60 kg. rzeplin.pl/c-d-chomik-europejski/

BTW, I recalled the idiom cause hamsters have returned to our area. I found a young one on the drive, probably killed by cats at night. My kids found a giant hole under the bush nearby.

Wow, that's a huge amount for just one hamster! Very impressive. Still hard to believe that you have lots of wild ones running around in your area.

Was my answer to the green grass idiom correct or not?

Yes, very correct.
Not such lots - they sort of vanished in two last years and this dead one was the first swallow which suggests their return.

Eggs/balls like baloons.