In English, you might describe something easy to do as a cinch or a piece of cake. Several other languages employ tasty metaphors to convey a similar idea. In Brazilian Portuguese, you something easy can be described with an idiom that translates as “a papaya with sugar.” A Dutch idiom literally translates as “a little egg,” and in Polish, you can say something’s easy with a phrase that translates as “a roll with butter.” Writer Adam Sharp has gathered these and other idioms in a book called The Wheel is Spinning But the Hamster is Dead: A Journey Around the World in Idioms, Proverbs and General Nonsense. (Amazon) This is part of a complete episode.
After an international team of scientists and staffers spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, their accents changed ever so slightly, according to an acoustic analysis by German researchers. The slang terms they shared include dingle...
Is the booty as in shake your booty related to a pirate’s booty? The booty that means “derriere” is an alteration of botty, which is itself an alteration of bottom. The booty that means “loot” or “plunder”...
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