What are some (non-English) idioms, and what do they mean (both literally and in context)? Odd ones, your favorite ones - any and all are welcome. :)
For example, in English I might call someone a “good egg,” meaning they’re a nice person. Or, if it’s raining heavily, I might say “it’s raining cats and dogs.”
Icelandic is full of fun idioms:
“He’s totally outside driving” = he’s very incorrect about something, possibly crazy
“It’s hard to grab his horns” = He’s very headstrong and stubborn
“A wave rarely comes alone” = If something bad happens, usually a lot of bad things happen at once
“He hasn’t peed into the salty sea” = he’s young an inexperienced
“He has unclean flour in the corner of the bag” = he’s untrustworthy
“I totally come from the mountains” = I’m out of the loop, unaware of recent developments
Danish has this also, just phrased like “He’s not got clean flour in the bag”
Maybe it’s from common heritage
Yeah probably, a surprising amount of Icelandic idioms have Danish/Norwegian counterparts
Swedish has it as well, so I think we can safely scratch it down to common heritage.
They do not fuck around when it comes to unclean flour
Similar to ‘Have you been living under a rock?’.