Ill start:
“Me cago en tus muertos” - ill shit all over your dead relatives. Spanish.
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.
English has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult)
Seems to be used in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Being from Spain, I’ve never heard Salami being used as an insult.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Similar to “He’s one can short of a six pack”
The English equivalent being, “She is several chicken nuggets short of a happy meal”
A few sandwiches short of a picnic.
A few cards short of a deck.
The German equivalent is “Not all cups in the cupboard”
The Australian equivalent is “a few snags (sausages) short of a barbie (barbeque)”
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”
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.)
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.
This reminds me of the not-very-edifying-at-all moment when “joey” became a universal term of abuse in UK playgrounds.
I’m wheezing. Never heard it before but the image is livid in my head.
That’s so specific. lmao
That just sounds like ableism
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.
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).
Never heard that one being used, though.
It’s not super common but I do hear it on occasion.
“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…
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.
Reminds me of ones like “You’re one fry short of a Happy Meal”, or “You’ve lost some marbles”. They generally imply that you’ve lost or are missing some mental faculties.
It’s like saying somebody is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
My favorite way to say that somebody is stupid is to say “Er ist dumm wie drei Meter Feldweg”, translates to “he’s as dumb as three meters (a bit more than 9 yards) of dirt road”.
Storing cups in drawers, huh.
“Schrank” is not really a drawer. Translating it as “cupboard” would be more appropriate, I think.
Ah, maybe. My vocabulary for kitchen furniture is a bit unclear sometimes what equates to what.
Schrank would be a box with doors and several levels of storage inside.
In Bulgaria we have the very creative insult „You’re as sharp as an edge on a round table”, which I find pretty amusing
Cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, a caricature of an American southern gentleman, comes pretty close when he describes another character as “about as sharp as a bowling ball”
Wow so much lost in translation. I grew up with dubbed looney tunes, never knew he was supposed to be a gentleman let alone that it had a regional flavour. For me it was just a quirky rooster.
If you want to say that you don’t care about something (as in: “I don’t give a fuck”), in Serbian you would say: “My dick hurts”. And that’s an expression you’ll hear almost daily. A less used variant of that, but still legit is: “My balls are beeping”.
While not insulting, I’ll throw in our way to say: “I’m/You’re fucked”. It’s: “Jebao sam/si ježa u leđa”, which means: “I/You fucked a hedgehog in the back”
Brazilian portuguese tends to lack impactful phrases, but is full of single curse words. A big portion of them a clear example of how much negative bias there is culturally against certain groups (gay men, women in general, disabled), unfortunately :/
One that isn’t often used, but that I almost always laugh loud whenever I hear, is “Enfia uma dentadura no cu e sorria pro caralho”, which roughly translates into “Stick a denture up your asshole and smile at the dick”. For when simply saying “go fuck yourself” isn’t enough.
Pannekoek.
You figure it out.
There’s also koekwaus
Typically those people talk lulkoek.
Pancake?
Damn. I was hoping for Cock-Pain.
piemelpijn?
Tiny cock?
pancake, because flat and without real content. Plus, it just sounds good.
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.
