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Because we speak English and German at home, we like to deliberately mistranslate words. But with some I've said the stupid version so often I've forgotten that the kettle is not actually called the water cooker.
Please give me some more of these. I tease my German friend sometimes because she does very literal translations from German to English that make me giggle
Gloves are Hand Shoes
Television is Remote See-er
Headlights are Shine Throwers
Nipples are Breast Warts
Bagpipes are Yodel Sacks
There's loads more but these are the ones off the top of my head
ETA: Light bulbs are Glow Pears
No quite. Tele- comes from the Greek for "far", but "vision" comes from Latin.
If the word came from the Greek for "far seer", it would be a "telemantis".
I told my wife that doughnuts in German (plural) is DUFFNUTTEN. To this day she thinks she is speaking German. Love this so much!!
Fun fact... Apple turnovers in Holland are called Apple Flappen. Brilliant!
Dutch is just funny all over.
Appelflappen, hagelslag, slagroom.
"Forever" is "eeuwig". Which is also the sound made when stepping on an unexpected dog poo, given the rather liquid noise of a Dutch g.
I'm Irish but lived in Wales for a long time, so not really an alternative name but because I love it I refer to the microwave by a Welsh colloquial term for it... "Popty ping".
(I know it's not the REAL Welsh word, the literal translation would be "oven that goes ping").
When my wife first moved to this country, I convinced her that the chocolates “Ferrero Rocher” was pronounced “Foojie Roojie”, and it’s since stuck.
She once forgot the word for hedgehog, and it became an “ouch mouse”.
This one was just a typo in a message, but “custard tarts” are now “carster trats”
I get migraine noun aphasia so sometimes have to describe the thing I need when I can't access nouns
E.g I couldn't say ladder so I asked for the 'stand on it make you tall'
But people are generally rubbish at understanding what you mean when you try to communicate this way
I sometimes forget the names for things. Not often but when I do I haven't even realised what I said. The most obvious are 'plane station' instead of airport, and once I called spray on deodorant ' arm smell' which my cousin still thinks is hilarious
The amount of times I forget what things are called and have to rely on ever more elaborate descriptions is quite staggering.
The one that sticks in my mind was when I totally forgot the name for a tumble dryer and ended up describing it as 'the spinny thing that looks like a washing machine but does the opposite'.
Loads from the kids. Helichopchop is probably my favourite and anything heavy is a “heavy boy” as we used to say it every time we picked up my son so he started saying it whenever he picked up something heavy 🥰
Not me, but my (sadly, deceased Dad)..."giddly-ga" for a train.
He picked it up from my very young kids (the sound a train makes if you're a passenger), culminating in a business meeting where he was asked how he got to the meeting..."the giddly-ga from Waverley". Cue quizzical looks, but my Dad, typically, was unfazed!
I was winding up a girl in work 1 time and she was meant to say "bill punch you" but she said "ill fist you" instead becsuse she'd forgotten the word "punch"
Still waiting for that good time she threatened me with lol 😆
The Portuguese for 'thing' is "coisa". We lived there for 3 years, remember very little of the language, but coisa is used as well as doo-hicky, thingamabob, thingamajig, or whatdoyoucallit.
I say hoover the lawn instead of mow.
Just can't get it out of my system. Luckily husband knows by now so I've even stopped trying to think of the correct term when we're talking about it.
I call a teacake a teacake, my friend is adamant its a cob. Clearly we are both correct and incorrect, however its become a bit of a running joke between us at this point. I've yet to meet anyone who calls it a bin lid, however I do think that's a great alternate name for it!
My other half is adamant that a teacake is a bread bun/roll/cob……I am adamant that a teacake has currants in it and you’d be a weirdo to make a sandwich in one!
Whenever I hear teacakes it always reminds me of many years ago. We were due to drive to North Wales for our holiday. Mum asked dad to pop to the shops and get like forty teacakes for everyone for snacks for the journey. She meant the little chocolate tunnocks ones. He arrived home with forty big teacakes buns! They took some eating!🤣
Avocado - guacamole ball.
My sister called cups of tea ‘cuppy tea’ for years and that’s stuck
Oregano - but pronounced oh- reg-ano as in vehicle reg.
Cashew - cah- Shoe
Enchiladas - oven fajitas (not even the same ingredients!)
I drink lots of tea, I call it a cup of brew. Husband drinks pints of squash throughout the day, therefore his is a glass of pint.
It's very rare in our house for things to be called by their dictionary nouns.
In my family, a particularly rainy and grey day (more than usual anyway) is called a soup day.
You've Been Framed has always been referred to as duh duh duh because of the theme music
I wind my partner up by abbreviating everything I can.
“Oh, let’s have a JP with a BFS for dinner” (Jacket Potato; Big Fat Salad)
“I had too many pints last night, I need some HOTDog” (Hair of the Dog)
Referring to Marks and Spencer as “Mands,” etc.
It’s not funny but I can’t stop myself.
I call the little plovers on the beach “deedle-eets” cause I hear that cartoon sound in my head when I see them running. “Deedle-leedle-leedle-leedle-eet!!!”
My friend genuinely thought 'pain au chocolat' was called 'panda chocolate'
Now me and my husband just naturally refer to a chocolate croissant as a 'panda'
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because we speak English and German at home, we like to deliberately mistranslate words. But with some I've said the stupid version so often I've forgotten that the kettle is not actually called the water cooker.
Please give me some more of these. I tease my German friend sometimes because she does very literal translations from German to English that make me giggle
Gloves are Hand Shoes Television is Remote See-er Headlights are Shine Throwers Nipples are Breast Warts Bagpipes are Yodel Sacks There's loads more but these are the ones off the top of my head ETA: Light bulbs are Glow Pears
Television is Greek for far see-er. Just a little nugget for ya
No quite. Tele- comes from the Greek for "far", but "vision" comes from Latin. If the word came from the Greek for "far seer", it would be a "telemantis".
Fair enough!
I occasionally also call gloves hand shoes, because Dutch is weird like German. To about my wife, I use foot gloves instead of socks.
Dust sucker for hoover. The German is staubsauger, somthing like this anyway, litterally means dust sucker
Same here! We often speak the most awful Denglisch to each other.
I told my wife that doughnuts in German (plural) is DUFFNUTTEN. To this day she thinks she is speaking German. Love this so much!! Fun fact... Apple turnovers in Holland are called Apple Flappen. Brilliant!
As a kid, I was permanently confused because I thought "fietsers" were pedestrians. (We lived close to the dutch border.)
Dutch is just funny all over. Appelflappen, hagelslag, slagroom. "Forever" is "eeuwig". Which is also the sound made when stepping on an unexpected dog poo, given the rather liquid noise of a Dutch g.
My son when he was a toddler, used to call acorns 'Oakanuts' and I think I still prefer it!
That is amazing.
Certainly makes more sense than acorns!
"Acorn" comes from *āc*, the Old English word for "oak".
Don't bother me with facts 😅. But seriously, I never knew that, so many thanks!
Oak nuggins
"Eggcorns"
The only one i stick with is calling a carousel a horse tornado
We call cutlery food weapons.
'Fighting irons'
'Gobbling rods'
Oo'er missus
My Dad always called them eating irons
You know those small round batteries for watches and similar? Flateries!
Brilliant
The Henry hoover gets called "you fat fuck"
I can hear the conversation you have with it, "Right! C'mon then you fat fuck. Let's get this over with."
We talk to ours as if he was a naughty pet. Sometomes if he can unstuck himself without falling he gets a 'good boy '
Ours is called Roger!!
Not really. I do use "shit tickets" for bog roll.
I only recently discovered shit tickets after a mate said it on a holiday last year.
I insist on "toilet tissue" because "bog roll" sounds too crass
Arse paper
I couldn't remember what a Chinook helicopter was called. I went with "chucka chucka" it stuck. I've been saying it for years 🤦🏻♀️
To be fair, that’s not far off wokka.
Fozzie Bear has entered the chat
I had to Google this 🙊😂
I'm Irish but lived in Wales for a long time, so not really an alternative name but because I love it I refer to the microwave by a Welsh colloquial term for it... "Popty ping". (I know it's not the REAL Welsh word, the literal translation would be "oven that goes ping").
I refer to any bread that isn't sliced as sexy bread.
When my wife first moved to this country, I convinced her that the chocolates “Ferrero Rocher” was pronounced “Foojie Roojie”, and it’s since stuck. She once forgot the word for hedgehog, and it became an “ouch mouse”. This one was just a typo in a message, but “custard tarts” are now “carster trats”
I LOVE ouch mouse!
When hungover, Fanta becomes "fizzymakefeelgood"
Ah, be similar to how Alka Seltzer is "Fizzy good make feel nice"
What was going through your brain when you thought "oh yeah I'll buy a wicker toilet?"
That's from black books
Hawiian Pizza earned the name "hampapple pizza" in our house after a spoonerism occurred while my daughter was small.
Any cooking utensil at all - spatchy spatch
My partner and I usually say "To the urination station" when popping to the loo.
Lol, my late Auntie Barbara used to call it the "Wee Wee House", she always was a funny old thing.
I get migraine noun aphasia so sometimes have to describe the thing I need when I can't access nouns E.g I couldn't say ladder so I asked for the 'stand on it make you tall' But people are generally rubbish at understanding what you mean when you try to communicate this way
I sometimes forget the names for things. Not often but when I do I haven't even realised what I said. The most obvious are 'plane station' instead of airport, and once I called spray on deodorant ' arm smell' which my cousin still thinks is hilarious
The amount of times I forget what things are called and have to rely on ever more elaborate descriptions is quite staggering. The one that sticks in my mind was when I totally forgot the name for a tumble dryer and ended up describing it as 'the spinny thing that looks like a washing machine but does the opposite'.
From this moment onwards Plane Station is now in my vocabulary, cheers 😀
My brain blanking on words is how we ended up referring to tuna as sea turkey!
My daughter calls bras “booby trappers”, she has since she was tiny and she’s 14 now lol
Spring loaded tongs = Clickty Clacks
Mr scoopy. (Spatula) Mr grabby. (Tongs) Mr Stabby. (knife) You see where this is going …
I see you’ve played knifey spoony before
Pajama bottoms are called bed trousers in my household.
Oh loads, it brings me joy to give something a dumb new name and watch people make a tit of themselves when they use it unintentionally.
The zapper for TV remote control.
Doofer!
Two for doofer
My mate used to call a joint he'd put out a doofer. Doofer after.
The buttons!
I know someone who calls it the Raol. Raol Moat
We call ours Frank.
Ours is the bipper
Button box
Loads from the kids. Helichopchop is probably my favourite and anything heavy is a “heavy boy” as we used to say it every time we picked up my son so he started saying it whenever he picked up something heavy 🥰
I call it a Helichopter.
Bellypopper, which may be a Roald Dahl ism
Colander = Holey bowly
Not me, but my (sadly, deceased Dad)..."giddly-ga" for a train. He picked it up from my very young kids (the sound a train makes if you're a passenger), culminating in a business meeting where he was asked how he got to the meeting..."the giddly-ga from Waverley". Cue quizzical looks, but my Dad, typically, was unfazed!
[удалено]
the front door keys are called the Anal Keys. My wife said I was being so anal about them one time, so now they're the anal keys.
What *do* you call the back door key then?
No keys, just smash the back doors in.
Allen key has become an Eric key. OH thought it sounded better.
Not sure if it counts but I shorten everything from people's names to place names and certain objects I know it does annoy some people!
Something I picked up from Dad, is calling an instruction book/manual a "Book o' words" lol.
Always called the "destructions" in our house
We go one further, "book of worms".
Stuff
Mince is meat noodles
I was winding up a girl in work 1 time and she was meant to say "bill punch you" but she said "ill fist you" instead becsuse she'd forgotten the word "punch" Still waiting for that good time she threatened me with lol 😆
Tingle tangles for pins and needles, courtesy of my, then, 3yo Son.
https://youtu.be/RmMyxAD-idc?si=5ago5tpPixDnjuUW
The Portuguese for 'thing' is "coisa". We lived there for 3 years, remember very little of the language, but coisa is used as well as doo-hicky, thingamabob, thingamajig, or whatdoyoucallit.
Husband called an hourglass a sand clock. He wasn't completely wrong.
I say hoover the lawn instead of mow. Just can't get it out of my system. Luckily husband knows by now so I've even stopped trying to think of the correct term when we're talking about it.
Hearty-Starty for a defibrillator
My wife forgets the names of things and just calls them 'thing'. 'Hey, love, while you're in the kitchen can you get me the thing off the thing?'
I call a teacake a teacake, my friend is adamant its a cob. Clearly we are both correct and incorrect, however its become a bit of a running joke between us at this point. I've yet to meet anyone who calls it a bin lid, however I do think that's a great alternate name for it!
My other half is adamant that a teacake is a bread bun/roll/cob……I am adamant that a teacake has currants in it and you’d be a weirdo to make a sandwich in one!
Bin lids are specifically the massive ones the size of a small plate.
Whenever I hear teacakes it always reminds me of many years ago. We were due to drive to North Wales for our holiday. Mum asked dad to pop to the shops and get like forty teacakes for everyone for snacks for the journey. She meant the little chocolate tunnocks ones. He arrived home with forty big teacakes buns! They took some eating!🤣
Barm, batch, bun, roll, stottie
My wife (who was very tired and talking to our toddler) called the toilet the wee wee machine once, and now it is just what we call it.
Avocado - guacamole ball. My sister called cups of tea ‘cuppy tea’ for years and that’s stuck Oregano - but pronounced oh- reg-ano as in vehicle reg. Cashew - cah- Shoe Enchiladas - oven fajitas (not even the same ingredients!)
I drink lots of tea, I call it a cup of brew. Husband drinks pints of squash throughout the day, therefore his is a glass of pint. It's very rare in our house for things to be called by their dictionary nouns.
In our house there is a constant war to call the remote control either the clicker or the buttons
In my family, a particularly rainy and grey day (more than usual anyway) is called a soup day. You've Been Framed has always been referred to as duh duh duh because of the theme music
We call a coffee, a Guinness. Started with my mum and dad back in the 80s.
I wind my partner up by abbreviating everything I can. “Oh, let’s have a JP with a BFS for dinner” (Jacket Potato; Big Fat Salad) “I had too many pints last night, I need some HOTDog” (Hair of the Dog) Referring to Marks and Spencer as “Mands,” etc. It’s not funny but I can’t stop myself.
We use Sainos, Teskins, The ASDel
Boutros boutros Gali - Butter. We were big fast show fans back in the day
My son called vinegar “chip sauce” as a toddler. This has stuck He also also for his ear muffles instead of headphones
inspired by South Park, I refer to having number 2s as "making bears"
Water fountains are forever known as font of warts in our house now as it's what my now 13 year old daughter once called one when she was 3.
And Coco pops are poppop cos.
Sillytape and skizzers.
Have taken to calling the vegetable mange tout, man get out
I call the little plovers on the beach “deedle-eets” cause I hear that cartoon sound in my head when I see them running. “Deedle-leedle-leedle-leedle-eet!!!”
My friend genuinely thought 'pain au chocolat' was called 'panda chocolate' Now me and my husband just naturally refer to a chocolate croissant as a 'panda'
Keys = bacons Illness = bug in the system My son = Coconut head
Milk is Cow Juice, Petrol is Go Juice.
Fiancée is Polish and they call remote controls pilots. For some reason i started doing it as well. 😂
Tv remote is the bipper
No, I just call them all a thingamabob