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.

In English, if we're talking about something that's not going to happen,

we might say it's going to happen when hell freezes over or when pigs fly.

But in Spanish, you can describe something impossible by saying it's going to happen.

On the day when cows fly, a día que las vacas walen.

And in Italy, it's not cows or pigs flying.

And probably it's donkeys, they say, the equivalent of when donkeys fly.

And it turns out that there's a fancy name for this rhetorical device.

It's called an atonaten.

That's A-D-Y-N-A-T-O-N.

Atonaten, it comes from the Greek word that means impossible.

And atonaten's go all the way back to antiquity.

And you'll find them in lots and lots of languages around the world today.

In the Malay language, for example, they'll say,

it's going to happen when cats grow horns.

Cats, get up to all kinds of trouble, I wouldn't put it past them.

Well, Grant, here's one of my favorites.

It's from Bulgarian.

It translates as, oh yeah, that'll happen when the pig in yellow slippers climbs the pear tree.

Not just any pig.

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