Ill start:
“Me cago en tus muertos” - ill shit all over your dead relatives. Spanish.
Calling a male a “nephew” in Chinese 契弟 kai dai is calling them a male prostitute.
Usually it doesn’t mean target male has actually been used sexually, but commonly used for general belittlement.
This term comes from ancient times: Traveling businessmen who would take a young boy with them for sexual use, but if anyone on the road or destination asked who the boy was, the business man would euphemistically explain “He’s my nephew”
契弟 kai dai is commonly translated as “nephew” but it means “adopted brother”
When a man balds at a young age, we say ‘they were still shaving his mom when he was born’
Pretty brutal, eh ?
I dont get it.
They shaved the private parts of women before giving birth back then. (Maybe it’s still a thing somewhere today, I don’t know.)
German Korinthenkacker (currant shitter) is someone who tries to win an argument by looking at unimportant details.
Salame
Yes that’s right, it means salami and in spanish it’s used to call someone an idiot. Soft insult, but I use it, and saying so and so is a salami in english would only get me weird looks.
Seems to be used in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Being from Spain, I’ve never heard Salami being used as an insult.
English has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult)
Triangeljosti.
The Jostiband is a Dutch orchestra for people with a developmental disability, mainly people with down syndrome.
A [triangle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_(musical_instrument\)) , or triangel in Dutch, is possibly the simplest instrument you can think of.
So calling someone a ‘triangeljosti’ is basically comparing them to someone who plays the simplest possible instrument in a band for developmentally disabled people.
I’m wheezing. Never heard it before but the image is livid in my head.
That’s so specific. lmao
This reminds me of the not-very-edifying-at-all moment when “joey” became a universal term of abuse in UK playgrounds.
That just sounds like ableism
I mean, OP asked for insults. You should be prepared to see some you don’t like (which is the point of an insult after all).
Well, yeah, it’s an insult so it’s not exactly meant to be flattering for either the insulted party or the person they are being compared to.
Never heard that one being used, though.
It’s not super common but I do hear it on occasion.
In Quebec French, people sometimes say of someone who’s not particularly bright:
“His mom rocked him/her too close to the wall.”
It’s just so… vivid and random.
A strong insult in french would be to tell that someone has been “fini à la pisse”.
I don’t know how to translate that but it would means that their dad did not have enough sperm so he used urine to conceive them.
Oh cool, we have a very similar one in German: “His/her swing stood too close to the wall.”
In polish, calling people with the neutral gender. It’s a grave insult which implies lack of agency and dehumanisation, and thank to some rightwinger assholes in parliament is also a specific transphobic insult now.
While in english it’s completely normal thing to say if you’re not sure of a person’s gender.
So definitely not my “favourite”, i would never said this to anyone in polish and i occasionally get a hiccup of misgendering someone in english because of that, but interesting from language point of view.
Is it kind of like calling someone “it” as an insult in English?
Pretty much yes, the closest thing that would be.
I’d say so, and I’ve seen it used in the same transphobic contexts.
In polish, calling people with the neutral gender…While in english it’s completely normal thing to say if you’re not sure of a person’s gender.
Maybe I misunderstand, but you should never call someone “it” in English, except for animals and babies. Calling someone “it” is considered dehumanizing in English.
Yes, what i meant that in english you call people in 3rd person “them”, “they” regardless of their gender, but in polish neutral gender would always be “it”. That’s why it’s so insulting to use it despite it is gramatically existing. Polish had pronouns literally build in every noun, verb and adjective.
This seems like a thing in Slavic languages in general. In Russian the equivalent is “одушевленные и неодушевленные существительные” - animate, and inanimate objects, so I guess they add one extra pronoun to the usual three, which is just for objects. I think some genderqueer people prefer using the plural pronoun in that case (“они” instead of “оно”). Is that possible in Polish?
The neutral gender is perfectly grammatical in polish, just it was never used for people other than small babies, i seen some effort to use it in literature for gender fluid or genderless people but it’s rare and don’t get positive reviews. It might catch some day though, i don’t know.
Yiddish is not my native language but I think this one is so good it absolutely deserves a mention:
All of your teeth shall fall out except one that gives you a massive toothache.
My personal favourites from Finnish.
“Ei ole kaikki muumit Muumilaaksossa” “Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley” Used for people who are either stupid or lack sanity. There are other variants of this and Moomin one is not older than a couple of decades.
I find our version of Grammar Nazi pretty great. We call them comma fuckers.
“Ei voi kauhalla ottaa jos on lusikalla annettu” “You can’t take with a ladle if it was given with a spoon”. This refers also to a lack of something, usually a lack of intelligence or sense.
“Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley”
That’s totally something we’ll use. Thanks :D Also I’m stealing that. I’m stealing that insult and Americanizing it and you can’t stop me
Just be warned Moomins are a gateway to communism (Weird internet theory). Or at least to more Moomins. We literally have Moomin everything here.
In Denmark you have:
- Paragraph Knight - someone who cares too much about rules and regulations.
- Fly Fucker - someone who cares too much about something deeply insignificant.
In German there is “Paragraphenreiter” - Paragraph rider.
كول هوا
“Kawl hawa”
Literally “eat air” in Arabic
Means shut up
Oh that is fantastic. I need to use that one.
That’s hilarious
Altough it’s more like a “gypsy curse”, but there’s one that translates to sth like “I wish you’ll having ten rings but none fingers”
In Tamil: சோத்துல உப்பு போட்டு தான தின்ற?
Translation: Don’t you add salt to your food?
Context: This is when somebody doesn’t react/listen/change no matter how much they are insulted. The other party asks if they add salt to their food, or if they only eat bland food, and thus have lost all emotions and have become as bland as their food.
It’s a bit difficult to explain, but the general belief is that food reflects your emotions and reactance and moods. Bland food - emotionless, spicy food - easy to anger, etc.
Portuguese is full of these, but how about vai pra casa do caralho.
Which roughly translates to “go to the dick’s home”, basically another way of saying “go fuck yourself”, but even more vulgar somehow.
Portuguese here. “Diz que vais cagar e baza”, which translates to “Say you go shit and get outa here”, when someone is not welcome.
Brazil “eu caguei e andei” (I shat and walked). Functionally equivalent to “I don’t give a shit” but in Portuguese one actually shits but doesn’t care to wipe and walks away or walks at the same as is shitting.
Oh, another one: “deves comer gelados com a testa”, which translates to “you must eat icecream with your forehead”, a not so soft way to call someone stoopid
I’ve heard ‘caralho’ used to be the name for the lookout on top of a ship’s mast (later turned into yet another word for dick) and sailors were sent to duty on the caralho as punishment?
I’m not Portuguese though, so if any native could confirm …
Argentinian here, I find very funny that a while ago somebody decided to express frustration saying la concha del pato or la concha del mono (lit. “vagina of the male duck” or “monkey”). Yes, the absurdity of a male animal with a female organ seems to reinforce the obscenity somehow.
Nunca escuché la del pato. De qué parte de Argentina?
Not that it’s untranslatable, but I enjoy it quite a lot.
Поцілуй бузька в калатало - go kiss a stork on the knocker.
If you ever heard storks, you’ll recognize the dismissiveness of this statement.
