Your wife is a husband? :eek:
You must not have nice friends. I’ve been at friends places and asked if they had a dictionary* and they would get up and go to their shelf and hand it to me.
*dictionary is a stand in for pretty much anything.
“Bitch, I just asked if you have a dictionary. Don’t fucking get up and hand it to me. What IS it with people?!”
Japanese? I read something once that the Japanese habit of “talking around the subject” evolved out of living in houses where the “rooms” were separated by paper walls/partitions. Those walls made it impossible to not overhear what somebody in the next “room” was saying, so people got into the habit of not speaking directly. It provided a “polite fiction” that allowed them to deny saying something, should somebody be so rude as to ask about something overheard through the wall. And of course, the rude asker would not ask directly, because that would be admitting to eavesdropping. Being indirect saved face all around.
I think I have it, it’s called boning the question.
Sometimes I’ll go on literal jags and answer what I consider yes or no questions with a simple “yes” or “no”. Sadly, very often the questioner will seem unsatisfied with the answer. Yet, a “yes, I do.” or “no, I don’t” will satisfy them.
When I was in the service, an acceptable answer to a perceived nosy question like “What time did you wake up on Saturday?” would be “That’s a personal question.” which was the correct way of telling someone “That’s none of your fucking business.” And as for answers to direct questions that ramble on about automotive difficulties, trips to the store, and family matters, we’d say “That sounds like a personal problem.” Sometimes, we’d add “Would you like a chit to see the Chaplain?” which was the correct way of saying “I don’t care.” with the optional “Tell someone who gives a shit.”