Backpfeifengesicht
In first year, my best friend went out with a boy who was known to all of us simply as “the boy with the punchable face”, because he had a face that seemed, for some reason, to just cry out for a slap. In Germany, they have an actual word for this phenomenon. ‘Backpfeifengesicht’ is a typically German compound noun meaning “a face that cries out for a fist in it”. This is also a word in Queubec-French (“face à claque”), Chinese (“Qian Zou”) and Hungarian (“tenyérbemászó”). Violent languages, clearly.
Mamihlapinatapai
There is something both beautiful and satisfying about having a word to express a lack of need for words. Considered (by Wikipedia) to be “one of the hardest words to translate”, ‘Mamihlapinatapai’ is derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego. It can be roughly defined as “a wordless yet meaningful look between two people who both desire to intiate something but are reluctant to start.” Another possible definition is simply an “expressive and meaningful silence”.
Tingo
Have you ever walked into the room of a close friend and felt, strangely, as though you were in your own room? A few of the items of clothing on the floor look familiar… and that book you took out of the library last week that is now overdue is on the desk… and all of those DVDs are yours… ‘Tingo’ is a Pascuenese word meaning “to gradually steal all the possessions out of a friend or neighbor’s house by borrowing and not returning” or “to borrow from a friend until he has nothing left”. Oxford life.
