You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. And in our part of the world right now, it's pretty hot, isn't it, Grant?

Yeah, it sure is. In Fahrenheit, it's in the 80s.

Yeah, it's way up there lately. And this has me thinking about expressions involving sweat.

Do you have a favorite?

Well, I've always thought that saying that women glow, they don't sweat, was always nice.

And Yiddish schvitz, you know, which even sounds like, it's almost onomatopoeic.

But, you know, we were at a campground the other day in the beautiful country of San Diego County. And we were talking about this weather. And I was saying, well, at least the humidity is low. Because I perspire a lot. And they all laughed. I was like, what? Perspire. It's a word. But, you know, I guess it's just a little too fancy for some people. Oh, perspire. I perspire. It's called perspiration. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little elevated, I guess. You don't put on an anti-sweat roll that you buy it to a drugstore, right? It's an anti-perspiration rule. Well, of course, there's also, you know, I'm sweating buckets or I'm sweating like a sinner in church. But Spanish speakers have a great expression.

It's suzar como a pollo, which, of course, means sweat like a chicken.

Wait, do chicken sweat under all those feathers?

And, well, no, and they don't perspire either, I don't think.

But if you picture a chicken on a rotisserie, you know, a rotisserie chicken.

That's right. When they're spinning, they are definitely schvitzing. Yeah. That is coming through the skin.

Right. Those juices, yeah. But I also like a couple of terms in Dutch. There's one that translates as, I'm sweating like an otter, which is kind of cute, you know, because usually when you see otters.

Yeah, when they come up, all that hair, it's still covered with water, they look like they've been working hard.

And they have been because they're busy with us.

Right.

Right. They're shiny.

But I think my favorite is a Dutch expression that translates as, I'm sweating little carrots.

Oh, little carrots. That sounds painful. Well, funny, you should mention painful because the Dutch word for little carrots is paintius, which sounds sort of like the Dutch word for pints.

And so it may be that those two words got, you know, combined.

Right, a little bit of wordplay of sweating pints makes sense.

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