zompist bboard

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George Corley
Producer and Moderating Host,

We have a word in Norwegian, "slesk" (/SlEs:k/). Many words in English, including "slick", "slippery", "shrewd", "devious", etc. are semantically close, but none of them have the same all-purposeness and endless applicability to them. The most common usage of slesk is when describing something as being "cool", but in a somewhat insidious, crafty, shrewd way. A song can be slesk; a person can be slesk; a maneuver in a car racing video game where you sneakily nudge your way past another car, causing the other car to crash, is very slesk. Anything can be slesk by virtue of encompassing other things that are slesk; a person can be slesk by frequently acting in a slesk way. In short: anything that's simultaneously cool and somewhat nasty can be slesk. And like all good slang adjectives, it's homological: i.e., "slesk" is a very slesk word.

Slesk overlaps in meaning with another Norwegian word, "sleip" (/Sl{Ip/), which is cognate of and roughly equal in meaning to "slippery". Sleip differs from slesk primarily in that it has a less positive connotation. If a person is sleip, it usually means that he's clever, scheming, devious and probably not very likable -- not necessarily evil, but probably not the sort of guy you'd like to hang out with. However if he's described as being slesk, it means that he's scheming and devious, but in a cool, hip and strangely endearing way. Slesk really is a wonderfully slesk word, and I pity English for lacking it.

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<Anaxandridas> How many artists do you know get paid?
<Anaxandridas> Seriously, name five.

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D'abord on ne parla qu'en poésie ; on ne s'avisa de raisonner que long-temps après. J. J. Rousseau, Sur l'origine des langues. 1783

English also has no direct translation of German "nervig" or "genervt". If a thing is nervig, it is steppping on your nerves — genervt is the state you are in then.

I miss the french preposition 'chez' when used before a personal pronoun*, like

Où étais-tu quand tu m'as téléphoné?
Chez lui.

Where were you when you called me?
At his place/At his house

Onde você estava quando você me ligou?
Na casa dele.

*Except for 'chez moi', which will be used as 'at home'. In Portuguese, the same thing'll happen.

Où étais-tu quand tu m'as téléphoné?
Chez moi.

Where were you when you called me?
At home.

Onde você estava quando você me ligou?
Em casa.

And the other way round, I miss the English word 'squishy' in Portuguese.

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<Dudicon> i would but you're too fat to fit in my mouth!!

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لا يرقىء الله عيني من بكى حجراً
ولا شفى وجد من يصبو إلى وتدِ
("May God never dry the tears of those who cry over stones, nor ease the love-pangs of those who yearn for tent-pegs.") - Abu Nawas