

25 Words that Simply Don't Exist in English - fryed7
http://sobadsogood.com/2012/04/29/25-words-that-simply-dont-exist-in-english/

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mistercow
I have to object "arigatameiwaku". First off, it's really two words:
"arigata", which means (in this context) "appreciated", and "meiwaku", which
really is a word that we don't exactly have in English but roughly means
"annoyance", and is tightly coupled with Japanese cultural concepts of
societal acceptance.

Secondly, we do, in fact, have a very closely related term in English: "white
elephant".

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felixr
Regarding two of the German words: I don't know if I have ever heard somebody
using "Backpfeifengesicht" recently, but I have heard the english term 'fist
magnet', which I think is pretty much the same. And "Waldeinsamkeit" is a word
I have never heard before and I do not see how this is "handy" (as the post's
original title suggests).

If you are really looking for good words that don't exist english, you should
read Douglas Adam's "The Deeper Meaning of Liff"

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philsnow
They've never heard a girl called a "butterface", I guess. e.g. "She looks
good (from the neck down / from behind), but her _face_..."

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twiceaday
The Russian "Pochemuchka" is a portmanteau. "Pochemu" translates to "why" or
"how come" and "chka" is a common ending for something small or someone
little, usually a girl. Its not really a word, just a use of a suffix. You can
modify most words like this. For example car is "machina", little car is
"machinachka". There isn't an English word for little car but so what?

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tzs
I don't think we need a word for Backpfeifengesicht. We can just say that's a
face needing fist. "face needing fist" is actually one character shorter than
Backpfeifengesicht.

For L’esprit de l’escalier, the phrase "jerk store" would probably be
sufficient to convey that sentiment for anyone familiar with the Seinfeld TV
series.

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zoidb
Hm, since when is "duende" not an english word? I'm pretty sure we borrowed
that one and it's not _that_ uncommon. The dictionary definition that I'm
aware of differs slightly from the definition given though the spirit of the
word is similar.

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drallison
<http://j-klein.blogspot.com/2011/05/its-dinglehopper.html> covers much the
same ground with illustrations.

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Mz
Schadenfreude is one I am familiar with as an adopted English word.

Desenrascanco: They gave the English equivalent: "to Macgyver it".

Guanxi: We call that "goodwill".

Nunchi: Social savvy. It's opposite is called socially awkward or gets labeled
as ASD (and, no, I am not joking).

