Game - guess Polish idioms/sayings in direct English translation - part 2

to be a minor (but persistent) annoyance


to do something despite being very afraid (sim to English 'with one's heart in one's throat')

It's obvious. And as I say, works in many languages including the one you try to post in here.

Wow, you told him, in case he doesn't notice I'm highlighting it for him.

Here's an idiomatic term.

What about the Grease Whippet? What is its Polish equivalent?

NB Grease nor greased.

Actually, he didn`t. You see things which don`t exist! Amasing!!!


No, you aren`t. You believe you do sth but you don`t in fact. Amasing!!!

Before I forget:

to have/look for hooks on sb

said Captain Hook.

Nobody guessed these riddles so let me offer you the solutions


Sb or sth that pinches, tires, irritates, distracts and gives no respite.


Feeling scared.


To know discrediting info about sb and be ready to use it against that person.

How abou this one:

each magpie praises its own tail.

I've heard that saying, however it wasn't about magpies, it was foxes.

It means that people often like to boast, even of they've no grounds to.

Exactly.
This saying reminded me of 1980s when I used to read excellent magazine Fantastyka which published s-fi stories by Polish and foreign authors. In one foreign story, I read : A success is like a fart. Only your own smells nice.
The story`s title was sth like: Invasion from the past.

We used to get American ones in the shops. I suppose they were ready printed and of course didn't need translating.

Some good stories, some not. They (and the ads in them) were an interesting glimpse into life there.

I used to buy Reader`s Digest and Newsweek magazines in antykwariat antique bookshops at the time. I still keep them on the shelf today, with my notes and highlighted words and phrases worth memorising.
They were quite up to date, just a few weeks older than the content. I suppose American embassy workers sold them to that antique bookshop.

Did you see the British edition, or any of the African ones? If so, did you like the joke pages and the inspirational quotes at the end of the articles?


More likely that they donated them, or RD supplied them since it was the Iron Curtain and RD was set up as a non-profit foundation to promote western values.

Almost gone now, just online which is very sad. I have a strong family connection to it.

There also used to be an edition called Read from Readers Digest, for people whose first language wasn't English.

Many, many, many years ago learning Spanish (first foreign language) I found a couple of Selecciones del Reader's Digest and read through them (or tried). I later read that the magazine was a contributing factor to standardization of written "Latin American" Spanish since it was intended for twenty or so countries...

The homogenization though made it kind of boring without any of the regional spark that makes Spanish so interesting...

Even now, a word can mean one thing in Uruguay and another in Argentina.

I miss the RD. It was a big part of my life when I was a kid, not just reading it but certain other specific factors.

Towards the end, it started to go downmarket, and also used to print more articles from the American edition with the English corrected but the body of the article the same.

and usually one of the meanings is obscene.... when Latinos from different countries talk it's only a matter of time (usually minutes) before one says something completely ordinary in his country that has another, very undesirable meaning in the other's. Think of US/UK differences like fag, cathouse, knock up, fanny, shag etc but X 10 (at least)

For the last 30 or more years regional differentiation (with a framework of mutual comprehension) has been the norm in LAmerica. Up until the 1940s or so the upwardly mobile dream was to speak like Spaniards and local variation was more limited to lower classes, now it's much more about region/country... Mexicans don't want to speak like Spaniards but they don't want to speak like Colombians or Peruvians or Argentinians either (and the feeling is very mutual).

Me too. My dad collected them. We had loads of them in our house. If I remember rightly, there was always a true life survival type story in them, like the one about the Uruguayan rugby/football? team that survived a plane crash in the Andes.

I remember 'Laughter the best medicine' and 'Humour in Uniform' sections too.

That's what I was thinking of, "cono".

A bit like the English speaking world. I'd avoid saying "cúnt" in America, however in Australia I maybe wouldn't.

Even between Yorkshire and Lancashire it differs. In Lancashire, little old ladies use it, in Yorkshire, it's far less acceptable.

In my town (which has, sometimes very old pre-Englisc dialect words that even the next town don't use, we say "clacker" 'snatch' and "clout" for certain lady parts. In a lot of the rest of the north, 'clout' means clothes, influence/power or 'to hit' and 'clacker/snatch' don't have the meaning we would give them. A lot of code switching goes on.


They usually used to get those in from other editions, usually the American one. At least once, the journalists there refused to sub-edit the story because they were too gruesome.


People used to send those in and get a decent amount of money if they were chosen. A couple of thousand a week, more when the payments used to increase.

The piles of letters were divided in half, sent to a lady in Yorkshire and a lady in Sussex who would choose the best then swap them over with each other and have a second look. They were both people who'd worked in the London office as journalists previously. For the letters, they were paid a flat fee for reading the thousands of them, and a bonus for any usuable ones they selected. When they used to meet once a year, they used to say three words to summarise a joke (e.g. stranger, biscuit, station) and fall about laughing.

A lot of the ones sent in were the same jokes, again and again. When the Indian and African editions were done from Britain, most of it was very Indian or African humour. Very pretty postage stamps on those exotic letter though. The lady in Sussex was elderly and not married so the lady in Yorkshire used to give them to her son.

That's obscene everywhere though the degree varies by country (like cnvt in English) and how commonly it's used. Maybe you're thinking of concha? It means (sea)shell in most places and is a diminutive form of Concepcion (a woman's name) but c[pka in Argentina. Rates of use of obscenity also vary by country Mexicans and Argentinians swear a lot while Colombians and Peruvians don't.

As I recall, Uruguayans say they've had a cono of a day, and Argentinians never would and find it crude. Or the other way round.

Who knows?? Quite possible.......


I didn`t but jokes and quotes by famous people could be also found in Am version.

I just notified certain poster let his name be forgotten that he whacked like a pidgeon onto a window ledge.

Behaved inappropriately? Didn't think before speaking?

Even worse - behaved stupidly. :):):)

Stop cawing!!! is a new idiom. Hell, where do I know all those strange idioms from????

Jak sroka?

No magpie, like a raven or crow.

The only idiom I know about crows is:

Kiedy przyjdziesz między wrony, musisz krakać jak i one,

It isn`t an idiom but a proverb.
But you are very close.


Yes, use this one with stop and you`ll get the meaning of my idiom.

I already translated it at the start but ' przestań krakać' is just the original Polish?