Teletubbyzurückwinker.
Someone that waves back at the Teletubbies.
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Teletubbyzurückwinker.
Someone that waves back at the Teletubbies.
Specific and evocative as fuck. German really is amazing.
Toilettentieftaucher is another great german word mishmash. Literally someone doing deep dives in toilets
Inventing stupid words for "weak" people like that is an ancient German running gag. Like Schattenparker (someone who parks in the shade) or Warmduscher (someone who likes warm showers). It's always tongue-in-cheek and no serious insult.
This is by far the best one.
No harsh words or vulgarity but lots of emotional damage.
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.
That’s so specific. lmao
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.
Oh cool, we have a very similar one in German: "His/her swing stood too close to the wall."
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.
While not my native language, in Japanese, many insulting things to call people are often translated as English curses, but actually are just increasingly disrespectful ways to refer to the listener. The actual translation for them is just "you" but not respectful. This might not be a complete list, but I got most of them at least.
Anata - Polite way of saying "you" but not often used in conversation except between spouses or lovers. It's preferred to use the listener's name instead.
Kimi - Rude in a polite setting, but not explicitly disrespectful, necessarily.
Omae - Now you're on the level of picking a fight, but good friends often use this for each other.
Temee - Extremely disrespectful
Kisama - Extremely disrespectful
Kono yarou - Extremely disrespectful
Is it Japanese i am think of that has an exclusionary “we” form? Almost as in “We(all of US but not YOU) were invited to the party.”
That's correct, you can insult someone accidentally while complimenting them in a similar way. The particles は (as in wa) and が (ga) have different connotations that can simply different things.
So saying メリーさんの顔はきれい (Mary-san no kao wa kirei, "Mary has a beautiful face") causes an implication that Mary has a beautiful face, (... But nothing else about her is beautiful). Changing the は for が makes the statement come across as intended.
Without going into detail on the whole wa vs ga thing, wa is more like "as for x..." which can imply a "but..." at the end, whether stated or not, which causes this effect.
In Chile, not really an insult but rather a lament over how dumb people are sometimes:
"Si los weones volaran, pasaría nublado" (If dumb people could fly it would always be cloudy)
In Germany we have the saying: "Herr lass Hirn regnen. Oder Backsteine. Egal Hauptsache du triffst!"
Which roughly translates to: "lord let it rain brains or bricks. Doesn't matter as long as it hits"
"Spargeltarzan", which is German for "asparagus Tarzan". Basically someone who is physically weak, but tall and lanky.
I also like "Lauch", which just translates to "leek", the veggie. Oh, and "Bohnenstange", which means bean stalk. We do seem to have quite a few vegetable-related insults in German, now that I think of it...
German: "Dich soll der Blitz beim Scheißen treffen" - Lightning shall strike you while you're taking a shit
Best insult ever, imo.
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.
Here are a few Austrian ones:
"Häferl" (Cup): someone with anger management issues
"Du rüttelst am Watschenbaum" (You are shaking the slap tree): I'm close to deliver the fruit of said tree to you.
"Ohrwaschlkaktus" (Ear cactus): Someone with large, protruding ears
"Saubauch" (Hog belly): A way of telling someone that they are fat and dumb at the same time. But in a nice way.
Băga-mi-aș pula-n coliva mă-tii de să-mi sară coaiele din bomboană-n bomboană
This is a highly niche one in my native language as well, as one must also know what is colivă - it's basically a desert that we eat at funerals with m&m-sized candies in it as well. So it roughly translates let me stick my dick in your mother's coliva so hard that my balls jump from candy to candy
三小 in Taiwanese literally translates as “what sperm?” But it means “what the fuck”.
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.
The disapproving and insulted look of a Canadian when you've done something so stupid that they can't even apologize for it.
It's when there's no apology or jokes, just the look, that you know you've become the stupidest fucker north of these here prairies and bears ya know.
In Bulgaria we have the very creative insult „You’re as sharp as an edge on a round table”, which I find pretty amusing
My favorite has to be zkundyksicht, it comes from "z kundy ksicht" which literally means "a face [that came] from a cunt". "Z" = from, "kunda" = cunt, "ksicht" = a rude way to say face.
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.
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.
Very Belgian: He doesn't have all his fries in the same bag / Il n'a pas toutes ses frites dans le même sachet
Meaning that he's/she's dumb or confused :D
The English equivalent being, "She is several chicken nuggets short of a happy meal"
"Κλάσε μου τα αρχίδια" which literally stands for "fart my balls" in Greek.
It's a way of telling someone to go fuck himself.
Not my native language but the German language has some pretty fantastic words/insults like "punchable face" (backpfeifengesicht) and "brain denier" (gehirnverweigerer).
"Dich soll der Blitz beim Scheißen treffen!"
May lightning strike you while you shit. One of my personal favourites.
"Enculeur de poules mortes" which basically means dead chicken fucker. It's translatable but sounds so much better in french.
Word: Muji
In Devnagari (Nepali): मुजी
Meaning: A woman's pubic hair
In sentence: तँ मुजीको गाला फुट्नेगरी पड्काउॅछु।
Translation: I'll slap the living crap out of you muji.
I’m a native English speaker so I can’t really contribute much to this post, but I remember watching a hidden camera prank show in the 90s, and the victim of the prank started yelling at the guy who pranked him. Unfortunately, I don’t know what language the show was in.
The TV show translated the insults he used and put it in the subtitles… and one of the insults was “curse the pig who delivered you”.
It probably sounded fine in his language but I remember thinking how oddly specific and personal to insult the midwife who helped your mother give birth to you lol.
Maybe there’s someone here who can recognise what phrase and language was used here?
German Korinthenkacker (currant shitter) is someone who tries to win an argument by looking at unimportant details.
In the dialect of the Italian province I'm from, my favorite insult is "Perdabàll", which literally means "balls loser" as someone who's so stupid and useless that could even manage to lose his testicles
When a man balds at a young age, we say 'they were still shaving his mom when he was born'
Pretty brutal, eh ?
In French, "pisse-vinaigre" or vinegar pisser, for someone that complains about everything
Heard one: Your mother has a penis and your father is jealous of it.
Du hast doch nicht alle Tassen im Schrank - German, you don't have all your cups in the drawer.
Telling someone he is stupid via comparison to cups. Why? Who knows.