Colorful Idioms

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

If I said to you in Spanish, me sacas canas verdes,

I’d literally be saying, you’re giving me green hairs.

Does that mean I’m… What does that mean?

I don’t even know what that means.

Well, figuratively, to give someone green hairs in Spanish means to annoy them.

You know, a parent.

Turn them into the Hulk, right?

They get angry and big and wear purple pants.

I think it probably predates the Hulk, because I know people whose mothers said that.

So where did you find this?

I found this at a fantastic website that collects a whole bunch of these expressions about color in various languages.

Goldmine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was sent to us by one of our listeners, Julio Diaz, who listens to us in Tijuana, Mexico.

And the page is at StarChamber.com.

We will link to it from our website.

That sounds ominous, but okay.

But this is a wonderful list.

It is a fantastic list.

Grant, if I’m in Japan and I say that I’m one red dot,

It means that I’m the only woman in a group of men.

What a useful expression, right?

One red dot.

I’m looking at this.

Some of these I know, but some of these I don’t.

And it’s interesting that the color chosen could be different than what we would use in English.

Oh, for sure.

For example, in Spanish, you would say un chiste verde, which means a green joke or a dirty joke.

But we might call that blue humor.

Exactly.

Whereas in German, you might say Blaumachen, to make blue, and it means to not go to school or work.

To be truant, right?

To skip.

Oh, really?

Take a blue day.

So you kind of go from language to language to language and find it changes just a little bit.

So we’ll share this list on the website.

Yeah, and in the meantime, if you want to talk about any aspect of language, call us 877-929-9673

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.