Interesting Foreign Expressions

The French expression peigner la girafe means to do a useless, tedious, or annoying job, but literally translates as “to comb the giraffe.” That’s one of the many gems in Mark Abley’s new book Watch Your Tongue: What Our Everyday Sayings and Idioms Figuratively Mean. Abley also observes that Korean youngsters use an expression meaning “Of course!” or “Absolutely!” Literally, though, the expression translates as “It’s a carrot!” You can hear the expression dang geun in an adorable Korean cartoon that shows carrots singing to each other that of course they’ll always be friends. This is part of a complete episode.