# There's no word for it in English........ **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 21, 2004, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317 "2004-10-21T00:32:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ccd318/32.png) [@John\_Kentzel-Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Kentzel-Griffin)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/41 "2004-10-21T05:58:49Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I think my favorite example of this was a Cherokee medicine man who once said to me, “You know that feeling you get when you wake up, snuggled in your sleeping bag inside a tent, and it’s just the beginning of autumn, so the air is crisp and cool and you just feel so alive, and you get up, stamping your feet against the chill, open your tent to the sky and realize that last night you pitched your tent (in the dark) on a hilltop, and as you look up through the trees, you see a single hawk circling above you, and then you turn around and look down over a valley of great beauty, all reds and oranges and the rush of your blood just swells up inside you, and your heart feels like it’s going to burst with the indescribable love of all creation?” > > “Um, yeah, I guess,” I said. > > He smiled. “We have a word for that.” > > 🆒 How? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/42 "2004-10-21T06:01:47Z")
> [@](#): > > (This of course, led to the foolish 19th/20th century grade school dictum against splitting infinitives. You can’t possibly split an infinitive in languages like French, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, etc., where infinitives are single words. So some grammarian decided that you shouldn’t do it in English, where infinitives are two words. ) But it’s arguably also impossible in English. To use the common example, consider Kirk’s monologue, “… To boldly go where no man has gone before”. Some pedants might claim that the adjective “boldly” is splitting the infinitive form “to go” of the verb “go”. But then, you could also say that the verb in that sentence is the compound “boldly go”, in which case “to boldly go” is the (unsplit) infinitive of that verb. But back to the OP, a couple more complimentary examples, both using common concepts, and both comparing to Latin (because that’s what I’m most familiar with). First, the Latin word “ubi”. It can translate literally to “where”, and it can also translate literally to “when”. The Romans used the same word for both, which could prove quite useful for events. If I want to know where and when a class will be held, I could ask that in Latin as “ubi est…”, whereas in English, I’d have to ask “where and when is…”. English just doesn’t have a single word for “where and when”. For another example, going the other way: English has a single word, “free”, with two completely different meanings. It can mean “without restriction”, or it can mean “without cost”. This is a very important distinction in certain segments of the programming community, since a given piece of software can be either, neither, or both. I might, for instance, pay for a piece of software, but then be granted liscense to do whatever I want with it, or I might obtain a piece of software at no charge, but still be legally forbidden to copy it. English has no word to describe “you have to pay for this, but then you can do whatever you want with it”, or “you can take this without paying, but only if you agree to certain terms”. Latin, however, does make this distinction, having separate words “gratis” and “liber”. ---
**Author:** ![bitwise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@bitwise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bitwise)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/43 "2004-10-21T07:32:48Z")
> [@bitwise](#): > > I remember reading somewhere that some language had a word that meant “staring into the other’s eyes waiting for the other to initiate what we both want but are afraid to start”. I forgot what it was; it was rather long and it began with an M (when anglicised). I think it was the language of some native people in the Tierra del Fuego. > > I’m trying to search for it now, but I can’t seem to find it. Found it > **[Mamihlapinatapai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamihlapinatapei)** > > The word Mamihlapinatapai is derived from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the "most succinct word", and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It allegedly refers to "A look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start" or "looking at each other hoping that the other will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do." > A romantic interpretati... ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/44 "2004-10-21T08:15:17Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > A quantum mechanics book I used back in the day gave the example of the German word _gemütlich_ as a word that can’t be translated into English. It is indeed often given as an example of such, but the English word `laid-back’ is probably close enough. The example scenario that is gemütlich is kicking back in a cafe in Vienna, spending hours sipping on a dark coffee, reading and watching the world go by. I’ve done this, by the way. Very laid-back. 🆒 By the way, schadenfreude is a full-fledged English word as far as I’m concerned. It’s made its way into pop culture (hell, there was a time not so long ago when it was being used by _everyone_), and I think most people can be expected to understand it at this point. English dictionaries which do not have it are either abridged, out-of-date, or both. (Upon preview, [dictionary.com](http://dictionary.com) lists schadenfreude from two sources as an English word, one of those sources being AHD.) ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/45 "2004-10-21T08:37:10Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > By the way, schadenfreude is a full-fledged English word as far as I’m concerned. It’s made its way into pop culture (hell, there was a time not so long ago when it was being used by _everyone_), and I think most people can be expected to understand it at this point. I must be completely out of touch then - I have no idea what “schadenfreude” means. Could someone explain? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/46 "2004-10-21T08:42:46Z")
I’ve skimmed a bit, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned that there are cases where there’s “no word for it in English” because “it” is something that doesn’t exist in English-speaking countries. Local wildlife, traditional arts and crafts, culture-specific concepts, that sort of thing. These things can be _explained_ in English, but there’s often not a single word that can be used to refer to them. One of the least satisfying conversations I ever had was with a couple of Japanese friends in college, trying to establish exactly what a “tanuki” was. I’d seen this word translated as both “raccoon” and “badger”, but I knew the former was indigenous to the Americas and had my doubts as to whether the latter was found in Asia. After my friends said that a tanuki was not actually a raccoon or a badger, or a kind of wolf, bear, coyote, or fox, or a panda, or a red panda, I began to suspect that the creature was completely mythical. But a little outside research told me that it’s actually a canid species native to Japan…and virtually unknown outside Japan. A non-Japanese person is unlikely to ever encounter one except within Japan, in which case they might as well just call it by the Japanese name. When I tell this story to my EFL students they often whip out their pocket bilingual dictionaries and look up “tanuki”. The common translation given is “raccoon dog”, which is a fair enough description, but at least to a Southerner like myself is more likely to evoke the image of a dog used to hunt raccoons rather than a kind of wild dog with raccoon-like markings. And that’s a fairly concrete example. There are all kinds of other non-English words that refer to more general concepts. Japanese also apparently has a noun (although I can’t remember what it IS) that means something like “the kind of girl who pretends to be afraid of things when she’s really not so people will think she’s cute”. I could describe the behavior of such a person in English (“feigned delicacy”, perhaps), but I can’t think of a single word that would do the job on its own. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/47 "2004-10-21T08:51:54Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I must be completely out of touch then - I have no idea what “schadenfreude” means. Could someone explain? Satisfaction at observing the misfortune of others. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/48 "2004-10-21T09:02:15Z")
It is worth mentioning that in a great many cases, the German language has a single word for a complex concept precisely becuase that single word is a simple concatenation of several descriptive terms - German isn’t the only language to do this, but it is a language that does it habitually. Schadenfreude, for example, comes from: Schaden = harm Freude = joy English could just as easily invent the term ‘harmjoy’ or, I dunno, ‘hurtrelish’ - it just _doesn’t_, well, not so often. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/49 "2004-10-21T09:12:12Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I must be completely out of touch then - I have no idea what “schadenfreude” means. Could someone explain? [Simpsons Moment] (At dinner, Homer gloats that Ned’s business is a flop.) Lisa: Dad, do you know what Schadenfreude is? Homer: No, I do not know what shaden-frawde is. [sarcasm] Please tell me, because I’m dying to know. Lisa: It’s a German term for ‘shameful joy’, taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Homer: Oh, come on Lisa. I’m just glad to see him fall flat on his butt! [getting mad] He’s usually all happy and comfortable, and surrounded by loved ones, and it makes me feel… What’s the opposite of that shameful joy thing of yours? Lisa: [nastily] Sour grapes. Homer: Boy, those Germans have a word for everything! [/Simpsons Moment] ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/50 "2004-10-21T09:16:56Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > **WhyNot** , I can believe that the Cherokee have a word for that feeling that does not translate well into English. (And I assume that it is the feeling and not the specific experience.) The English word _joy_ would fall a little flat for me. The Danes have a word which _might_ be similar to that which the Cherokee was describing. The word is _hyggelig_. I was told that it doesn’t translate well. But I would certainly welcome an attempt from someone who is familiar with it. Yeah, “joy” doesn’t quite capture it. It was very specifically meaning the “the joy of being alive and knowing you’re alive, feeling the life run through you and everything else, especially in the context of a crisp fall day.” I’m sorry I can’t come up with the word, as all his words sounded roughly the same to my uneducated years. ---
**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/51 "2004-10-21T09:17:44Z")
When I’ve been trying to feed our little baby, I’ve been reminded that there’s one very usefull word in Swedish that’s not available in English: _Gapa_ means _Open your mouth_ (And it’s said with a long ‘aaahh’ sound, that really does make you open your mouth.) (In a similar vein _blunda_ means _Close your eyes_, so we can say _gapa och blunda_ instead of the rather unwieldy _open your mouth and close your eyes_.) It’s a pity that English hasn’t (yet) picked up on this. (OK, there’s the word ‘to gape’ that’s similar, but rarely used in this context.) ---
**Author:** ![hildea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ebca7d/32.png) [@hildea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hildea)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/52 "2004-10-21T10:48:04Z")
There are a lot more examples in the IMHO thread [Let’s make a list of untranslatable words & phrases](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=260498&). ---
**Author:** ![quothz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/da6949/32.png) [@quothz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quothz)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/53 "2004-10-21T12:04:16Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Yeah, “joy” doesn’t quite capture it. It was very specifically meaning the “the joy of being alive and knowing you’re alive, feeling the life run through you and everything else, especially in the context of a crisp fall day.” I’m sorry I can’t come up with the word, as all his words sounded roughly the same to my uneducated years. Another flip through my dictionary shows that the phonetic for “autumn” is u-la-go-hv-s-di. To arise in the morning is spoken “di-le-di”. The phonetic for what you’re referring to is pronounced “bullshit”. You picked a poor language for this line - the Cherokee language is one of few Native American tongues with a written form, and its vocabulary is well-documented. This morning, I still see absolutely nothing even remotely like what you described. We’re not talking about a particularly extensive language, here, although I don’t have a word count handy. So, you got a cite or are you just wasting my time? ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/54 "2004-10-21T13:04:52Z")
> [@Cunctator](#): > > I’ve never heard the verb “to copulate” used transitively (i.e. with a direct object). It’s always been followed by the preposition “with” e.g. _X copulated with Y_. So the transitive is the combination “to copulate with”. “Copulate” itself doesn’t take an object. The earlier mentioned “swive” comes closest, being archaic enough to be inoffensive. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/55 "2004-10-21T13:10:53Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > But the “to know” examples given in French (true in Spanish as well) is not an example. That’s two redundant words being collapsed into one. It’s possible to do translations both ways w/o adding any “extra” words. But that’s exactly my point. To English speakers it’s redundant but to French speakers it’s not. The other classic example along these lines is the list of [Eskimo words for “snow”](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_297). ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/56 "2004-10-21T13:12:18Z")
> [@fighting ignorant](#): > > It’s because English lacks a certain, _je ne sais quoi_ I don’t know what that means. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/57 "2004-10-21T13:35:14Z")
> [@Mathochist](#): > > There are any number of examples of words “missing” from English. Some are concepts from other cultures which English merely uses a loanword for: _schadenfreude_, for example. Others are examples of distinctions other languages make which English doesn’t: say, the difference between French _savoir_ and _connaître_. Finally, there are even uses which are just missing; “Proper” English has no transitive verb to describe sexual act AFAIK. Perhaps you don’t consider _fuck_ to be “Proper English” (I’m not sure what you mean with this phrase) but English has at least one transitive verb to describe sexual coupling. And it’s got a long and glorious history at that. It’s part of every English-speaker’s vocabulary, whether or not they choose to use it. However, it has rather vulgar connotations (as do words describing sex in many languages) so perhaps you’re looking for a _polite_ word that means “to perform an act of sexual intercourse upon someone”. Good luck - “fuck” treats sex as an act perpetrated (if you will) upon another person, and it’s hard for me to imagine how a word describing sex in such a way could possibly be polite. Less rude English equivalents include _screw_ and _schtup_, off the top of my head - the latter, I would assume, being from Yiddish. Genteel words for fucking tend to describe it as an act or experience of a mutual nature - compare “We made love” with “I fucked her” (or “I screwed her”). I think the rudeness of _fuck_ is probably inherent to its transitivity; it implicitly describes the act as one with an agent and a patient (to use linguistic terms); describing anyone as a passive ‘fuckee’ in any language that I’m aware of is quite rude. At any rate, the concept space, as noted above, is diced up differently in different languages. What is perceived by speakers of one language to be essentially one meaning is teased apart into smaller meanings by speakers of other languages. And while English may not have one single word to describe some concepts, many supposedly “untranslatable” words can be easily translated with two or three words; others are claimed to be untranslatable when they really aren’t. For instance, the Portuguese language contains the word _saudade_, which they claim to be untranslatable because it describes an emotion unique to Portuguese-speakers. However, it’s actually pretty close to ‘yearning’ or ‘wistfulness’ in English; any claim that a word is untranslatable is one that should be regarded with a certain wariness. However, words with no equivalent _do_ arise in cases where speakers of one language develop an entire concept missing in another. For example, doubtless languages used by Australian Aborigines lack native words for “telephone” or “gigabyte”. When the concepts become salient in other languages, the words are usually borrowed in short order. Concepts like _zeitgeist_ and similar German or French loans into English are really no different; they arose out of specific schools of philosophy and literary criticism that developed first in Europe. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that English has to borrow such words. English is also not, in any particularly remarkable way, a “mongrel” language as it’s so often described. For example, its grammatical terms and usages are strictly Germanic in origin (though one could make a case that bound morphemes taken from French like “-able” and “-age” are more grammatical than lexical) and while a substantial portion of its vocabulary is ultimately Latin in origin, English has nothing on the dramatic grammatical (or structural) borrowing present in, for instance, certain Asian languages, which share similar syllable structures, grammatical tone, sounds, and even basic words including pronouns, despite having wholy separate origins. English isn’t unusual in its amount of vocabulary borrowing either; Japanese takes a similar (perhaps higher) portion of its words from Chinese as English takes from Latin, including extremely basic concepts such as numbers. Persian and other languages spoken in areas of Arab influence take enormous amounts of vocabulary from Arabic, and the wholesale sharing of word and grammatical structures has produced areas of Australia and India in which multiple languages are spoken that have merged so much that any sentence can be translated _morpheme by morpheme_ from language to language: the grammars of these languages have become identical. English’s limited borrowing from French, and extremely limited borrowing from other languages, is quite tame in comparison to many other situations of language contact. For some interesting discussion of more heavy borrowing situations, check out _An introduction to contact linguistics_ by Donald Winford, whence came many of the examples I’ve used above. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/58 "2004-10-21T16:29:39Z")
> [@quothz](#): > > Another flip through my dictionary shows that the phonetic for “autumn” is u-la-go-hv-s-di. To arise in the morning is spoken “di-le-di”. The phonetic for what you’re referring to is pronounced “bullshit”. > > You picked a poor language for this line - the Cherokee language is one of few Native American tongues with a written form, and its vocabulary is well-documented. This morning, I still see absolutely nothing even remotely like what you described. We’re not talking about a particularly extensive language, here, although I don’t have a word count handy. > > So, you got a cite or are you just wasting my time? Gee, what’s the Cherokee word for “jerk”? It’s not my language, I don’t know it. This was an anecdote that I enjoyed that seemed appropriate to the thread. I would like to drop this now, as there is another thread linked to which it’s more appropriate. I’m not sure why you’ve jumped onto this example, when there are other perfectly good examples in the thread. If you disagree with it, a simple, polite “I’ve studied Cherokee and I can’t think of the word he would have been talking about.” would have sufficed. I’m quite prepared to be wrong, but the tone and language of your posts is simply not nice. ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/59 "2004-10-21T17:46:19Z")
> [@quothz](#): > > Another flip through my dictionary shows that the phonetic for “autumn” is u-la-go-hv-s-di. To arise in the morning is spoken “di-le-di”. The phonetic for what you’re referring to is pronounced “bullshit”. > > You picked a poor language for this line - the Cherokee language is one of few Native American tongues with a written form, and its vocabulary is well-documented. This morning, I still see absolutely nothing even remotely like what you described. We’re not talking about a particularly extensive language, here, although I don’t have a word count handy. > > So, you got a cite or are you just wasting my time? I susspect the Cherokee word is far less limited than Joy of Autumn mornings, and has the perfectly valid English phraise “Joie de vivre” 😉 as a synonym. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317/60 "2004-10-21T18:04:23Z")
We were talking about laungage in the jury I was on as virtually all the witnesses spoke spanish through an interpreter but spanish speaking jurors were specifically instructed to only listen to the translator and not what the witness said. We did that but even those of us who know a very little spanish could tell tha one translator was doing an outstanding job, being very careful with translating words that don’t have a 1:1 equivalent in english and even duplicating the speech rhythm of the witness while the other translator wasn’t nearly as good. One of the Jurors, a Navajo, said that that language didn’t have a distinct word for dog but used the term “shit eating horse.” It gave me a new appreciation for why the marine code talkers in WWII were so effective. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/theres-no-word-for-it-in-english/270317.md?page=4)