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

And I'm Martha Barnett. In English, if you're at a loss or you've stopped making progress and you're otherwise stymied, you might say you're spinning your wheels or something like that. But in French, one way to say that translates as you've peddled into the sauerkraut. Peddled into the sauerkraut. Yeah, isn't that gorgeous? I mean, can you imagine peddling your bicycle into a whole bunch of sauerkra? I think that's so much more evocative. Definitely in the weeds there. Yeah. I got this from a beautiful little book that just came out called the Illustrated Book of Sayings. It's by

Ella Francis Sanders, and

there are wonderful phrases in this

book from all parts of the world.

I won't try the original language, but

in Turkish, there's a proverb that

translates as grapes darkened by

looking at each other.

Can you imagine what that means?

Grapes darken...

I don't know.

It's like we resemble the company that we keep.

Oh, of course.

You know, that notion that you're the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.

Oh, interesting.

Grape's darkened by looking at each other.

And there's a Latvian phrase that translates as blow little ducks. And that means they're not telling the truth. If somebody's not telling the truth, you say they're blowing little ducks.

When little ducks are like popping out of their mouth, little fuzzy duck limbs are popping out of their lungs. Pustpilitis.

Pustpilitis. They're so picturesque and proverbs and idioms often contain so much wisdom, so I'm going to share some more of those later in the show. If you'd like to talk to us about anything related to language, we'll talk about slang and new words, something you heard, something you said, how to write well, how to speak well, 8779-9-2673, email words at wayward radio.org or talk to us on Twitter at W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Hi, you have Way With Words.

Hey, this is Sherat. I'm calling from Austin, Texas.

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