It’s a strange kind of memory that I possess
I can’t remember the year in which I was married, I forget birthdays with monotonous regularity, and I once spent six months thinking I was a year older than I actually am. But I can retain useless bits of word porn; my head is literally stuffed full of it, probably because I love it so much. Here are some of my favourites:
- “Spaegie” from the Shetland Islands is a lyrical, evocative word. It describes perfectly the weariness of very sore muscles after too much exercise. The nearest and rather clinical English would probably be: “I have Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness” which just isn’t the same.
- Everyone loves a cuddle, but they come in many forms. When someone bigger and stronger puts their arms around you and makes you feel not just comforted and protected but understood and safe, the Welsh have a word for it: “Cwtch”.
- In typical German fashion, “Kummerspeck” is a word made up of two words, so that it translates literally as Kummer: Grief and Speck: Bacon. The hilariously appropriate “Griefbacon” means “weight gained as a result of emotional or stress related over-eating.”
- There is nothing more satisfying than finding a word that has a very modern use and takes an entire paragraph to explain. By far my favourite recent find is: “Pinchar” (Spanish). It means: “to call a mobile phone and let it ring once so that the other person will call back and save the first caller money, or so the other person can more easily save the first person’s number to their phone’s memory”. Love it.
- You know that thing when you are really grumpy and bad tempered, but know you are being unreasonable, and despite being in a foul mood, you are trying really hard to cheer yourself up? Wouldn’t it be handy if you could tell someone that in one word, so they don’t keep asking you why you are in a strop, thereby making it so much worse? The Russians can help you there. The word is “Bliat”.
But my favourite word is Japanese. Literally, it means “to repair with gold” but the underlying meaning is more involved, so that it is used to refer to many areas of life, and not just this art form. The time, care and patience it takes to make these beautiful repairs are a lesson in the acceptance and gentleness needed to repair almost anything, or anyone:
“Kintsukuroi: the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer, and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken”
