The issue isn’t that you wouldn’t call your aunt’s children cousins, the issue is that you would use modifiers in thinking/talking about more distant relations. I was an only child, but my grandmother had 8 siblings, who had from 1 to 7 children themselves, who had children of their own. Those offspring are all my cousins, I’ve always thought of them only as cousins, and I don’t think I’m in any way unusual in that regard. I have so many people that I know to varying degree that I consider simply “cousin” that I can’t even keep count of them. For instance, one of my Facebook friends is one of my grandmother’s sister’s son’s daughter’s daughters (who I haven’t actually seen IRL since she was an infant but who recently graduated college). Not only do I not think of her in any term more detailed than “cousin”, but I’d have to study a chart before I could list what degree of cousin she is.
Nice, I hadn’t thought of these.
However, I’m not sure they’re as ubiquituous as empêchement in French. In English, I often hear or use periphrastic structures such as “I’ve been held up” or “I will be unable to attend”.
Or that. 
I would never refer to the children of my aunts and uncles as anything other than cousins - the “maybe” is about restricting the use of “cousin” to only those people. You might say you are going to your second cousin’s wedding but other people would say “cousin’s wedding” as they don’t feel any need to distinguish between degrees. I would simply say 'my cousins are visiting from out of town" even if the cousins I’m talking about are my first cousins once removed and their children , my second cousins. The friend/coworker/whoever I’m talking to doesn’t need to know that over the weekend I went to Sean’s wedding and he is Christine’s son and Christine and I share four great-grandparents. Saying I went to my cousin’s wedding without the family tree is enough.
*Great aunt
**Second cousin once removed
***Second cousin
****Second cousin once removed
The “removed” business is interesting, but somewhat confusing, because it doesn’t distinguish between generations above and below one’s own. Thus your second cousins’ parents and children are both your second cousins once removed.
I come from a traditionally Catholic family. My dad was one of seven kids. Each of them has has at least two kids so I have 17 first cousins. But… my great-aunt Peggy, the family authority until she died (my father’s mother’s sister in law) kept note of who was who in the family, so I have tens of second, third and fourth cousins at various stages of removals. It probably adds up to over 100. Or actually more now we are getting to 5 times removed.
We just call them cousins, no one left has great aunt Peggy’s extensive interest in familiy trees.
As for the actual topic of the thread, the word in chiShona (a Zimbabwean language)
“Zwakapressa”
It literally means “it crushes” but using it implies resignation to the burdens of life which you can do nothing about. Something like stoicism but with a much more pessimist attitude.
That’s heavy.
There’s a Japanese word like that, too, isn’t there? I remember a reference to it in a book about the last year of WW2, when things kept getting worse and worse for the common people.
There is a common expression 仕方がない shikata ga nai which is often translated as “it can’t be helped” but depending on the circumstances can mean utter despair. There is also 絶望的 zetsuboteki which means completely without hope.
I don’t recall the exact words my former in-laws who lived through the Tokyo firebombing and years of despair and then the widespread poverty and horrific conditions while Japan was being rebuilt used to describe the experience. I’ve also talked to friends who survived Nagasaki as well as watched various programs on the war, but I don’t remember if there was one particular word they used.
I think that first one might be it. Thanks.
The Spanish word desgarrar is a good one for this thread. In its most commonly used sense, it means to rip up something (like paper), while the adjective desgarrador is used more often and metaphorically to describe emotional impact, as in a story or a sight that rips you up inside. There are reasonable translations in English, but they’re not used much: to rend and heartrending.
There could be an exact equivalent in French : déchirer - déchirant (des adieux déchirants).
Used to great effect in Jean-Louis Aubert’s Voilà, c’est Fini (“There, it’s over”)
Il [vaut] mieux couper que déchirer (“It’s better to cut off than to tear apart”) at 1:57.
The thread is about translations into English, not French.
Sure, but I meant that the same goes the French equivalent. There’s no English word that conveys the exact meaning.
No, it isn’t THAT narrow. It’s more general than that. It’s about equivalent expressions across various languages, back and forth. And expressions/words that don’t have equivalents in other languages.
Well, it’s your thread, but it’s the first time you’ve said that. “In English” is right there in the thread title.
I wanted to kick off a discussion based on this article:
I didn’t intend for everyone to take this absolutely literally… I like discussions in the threads I start, and I’m not all that rigid unless things go waaaay off track. Then I’ll flag a mod. (Because in the past I’ve been accused of junior modding.)
This is just the verb form of premiere.
Premiere is also a verb, but it’s not a perfect match. Estrenar doesn’t necessarily refer to the first showing, performance, etc. of a work of art or entertainment. It could refer to the first time new shoes are worn, for example.