Idioms: The sick horse

Just talked to Eric and he bought the "Idiom Book" they featured on NPR as we were driving to the airport. Now, there is one caveat. Most of the people they asked to read the idioms from their home country didn't know those idioms. As I said, the author relied on books and dictionaries. So there might be some disappointment.

Now to German Idioms Gone International Part II.

I had to laugh when the characters on a children's television show tried to get to the root of yet another one of those fantastic German sayings:
Ach Du gruene Neune!

This translates into, "oh you green nine." However, it works better if green has two syllables, which is why I would translate it with "oh you greenish nine." The exlamation mark is somewhat crucial as this is an expression of suprise mostly with a negative conotation. For example, you may have forgotton to turn off the stove when you left the house in the morning. Now you're in the office and you remember that there's rice cooking unsupervised in your kitchen and you cry out, "oh you greenish nine!" as you hurry home to prevent the house from burning down.

The horses. This is an unusual one. I just learned today that horse can't throw up, which has to do with how their stomach is "wired." Anyway, the idiom does have horses throwing up and it goes:
Ich hab' schon Pferde vor der Apotheke kotzen sehen (mit dem Rezept im Maul)
I'm only familiar with the first part, which translates to "I have seen horses vomit in front of the pharmacy." The second part is, "holding the prescrition in its mouth.
Now, we know that horses can't do that, and if they could, why would they do it in front of the pharmacy, holding the prescription in their mouth. I think this is the German equivalant to the American "flying pigs" idiom, which I can't remember.


Let's say your friend tells you that Michael Jackson called her yesterday to invite her for dinner, you would say, "sure, and I have seen horses vomit in front of the pharmacy." This would let her know that you think she's full of it. This can also be used if your friend, who is a recreational runer, won the Boston Marathon. Your comment to his success could be, "I have seen horses vomit in front of the pharmacy," which then means, anything is possible.

Idioms: Climbing in the box

When Eric drove us to the airport we heard about a new book on the radio. The book was bout idioms. Someone had tracked down idioms from other countries and translated them into English, mostly relying on dictonaries.

In the story, they mentioned a German idiom: Wie eine Made im Speck leben
Literally translated it means "to live like a maggot in bacon." This expression is used if you want to indicate that someone has it made. It's an okay translation. However, when I think about bacon I think about those packages of thin bacon strips and that doesn't seem to be the best place to "have it made" if I were a maggot. So I would probably use "to live like a maggot in ham" or "to live like a maggot in lard."

Today my mom used another German idiom, which I hadn't heard in ages. It made me laugh because I was thinking about translating it into English.
In German it is: Mit jemandem in die Kiste steigen
Translated this means "to climb into the box with someone," which means "to have sex with someone." I won't elaborate on the context in which this idiom came up, unless you insist.
It might be an idiom used in southern Germany. That's where my parents are from originally. I assume that it is left over from the days when beds resembled boxes. However, just imagine yourself asking a friend: "Hey, are you still climbing into the box with this guy you met at the nightclub last month?"

Which reminds me of zippers. Now this is not an idiom and some of you guys may have heard of the Zipper Principle-- das Reissverschluss Prinzip or Reissverschlussverfahren. This is a traffic rule. If you are driving on a two lane road and there's construction up ahead, forcing people to merge to one lane, you would employ the Zipper Principle. This means the drivers on the lane with NO construction would slow down, so that each one of them could make enough space to allow for one car from the lane WITH construction to merge. Like a zipper. This way, traffic slows down, but it won't come to a complete halt. Germans obey the Zipper Principle. However, driving homw from the airport I saw a strange sign that read "Reissverschluss in 200 Metern," which essentially means "zipper in 200 yards."

That's all for now on German idioms. Maybe we'll explore "horses who vomit in front of the pharmacy" in German Idioms Gone International Part II.