I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World (6 page)

Two fingers from death
French: at death’s door, almost dead

To fart higher than your butt
French: to be snooty, posh, to put on airs

Pull the hair out of someone’s nostrils

C
ROSS-CULTURAL ANATOMICAL ASSOCIATIONS
can be astonishing! They can show how differently being human can be embodied in other cultures. We think of the heart as being the seat of our emotions, our true feelings, and our deepest desires; hence English expressions like
take it to heart
or
in one’s heart of hearts
. The location of such seats, however, has not always been fixed.

Aristotle, considered the first serious anatomist of the West, believed the heart was the seat of thought as well as emotion. He also believed the brain was a radiator. He backed into that view from the observation that we are less hot blooded, less easily provoked, and less emotional in our responses than other animals. Fundamentally his
seat of the pants
logic
*
was that something had to be cooling our blood…and he apparently didn’t think we were using our larger brains for anything else. He is also reputed to have
sown the seeds
of the hegemony of reason. He believed that humans are fundamentally rational beings and that was what distinguished us from animals. Galen, the renowned Graeco-Roman physician, moved the seat of reason to the brain, but he differentiated between the heart as responsible for emotions, and the liver as the source of passions.

In stark contrast, the Japanese think of the stomach area as the place where their true feelings and intentions lie. References to similar sentiments survive in our language, for example in phrases like
gut feeling
and
gut instinct
. While we downplay our intestinal intelligence, the Japanese are far more interested in (pre-mortem
*
) gut reading. And it’s not just their own; they’re interested in gathering intelligence on the state of the intestines of others. They prefer visible viscera. When the Japanese say “your belly is transparent,” it means that you are not hiding anything, your true intentions are clear. Hence when the Japanese say “there is something in their bellies,” they don’t mean they have eaten; they mean they have
something up their sleeve
. Where we
set our minds (or hearts)
on something, an equally resolute Japanese would “tighten his belly.” If we don’t achieve what we had set our hearts on, we might be
brokenhearted
, whereas, to keep up the consistency of anatomical displacement, a similarly afflicted Japanese’s “intestines are torn.” Being heartbroken we might need to unburden ourselves, whereas a Japanese would “open up his liver and gall.” When we finally learn the inevitable lessons of disappointment
by taking something to heart,
the Japanese more alarmingly “chisel it into their livers”!

Languages can be windows into the workings of minds. Neuroscientists now have new windows to look through. High-tech tools can probe the physical underpinnings of our mental lives…including how we process language. Though some of these tools are still quite crude, almost a sort of high-tech internal phrenology, they nevertheless are yielding impressive results. We have long known which parts of the brain are required for language processing in general—Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, both of which are usually located on the left side of the brain. This gross neuro-anatomy was discovered using older techniques of brain-damageology. The newer tools are able to inspect much finer levels of detail of language processing. Scientists are beginning to identify how the brain encodes the meanings of some words, e.g., they believe that verbs and nouns are stored in separate ways. It seems that concrete nouns are encoded in areas of the brain used to sense or manipulate the referent objects, which is leading to a theory of meaning based on function.
¹
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance image) scanning has been used to watch how listeners’ brains try to predict the meaning of words as soon as they have heard the first syllable.
²
Scientists have been able to watch as the brain non-consciously considers many possible meanings of words, before it has even heard the final syllable.

It’s probably this sort of prediction and resulting potential for semantic ambush that attracts us to novelty in language. Shakespeare knew all about that. Philip Davis, a literature professor, and Neil Roberts, a neuroscientist, are collaborating to use brain-scanning tools to show how particular kinds of novel language constructs can excite us. In
Shakespeare Thinking,
Davis reports on the effect of “functional shift” or word-class conversion.
³
Though conservative word-watchers bemoan such conversions (verb-ification or noun-ification), they have been going on for centuries. And one of the greatest practitioners was Shakespeare. For example: “spaniell’d me” (
Anthony and Cleopatra
) or “this day shall gentle his condition” (
Henry V
). Davis says, “While the Shakespearian functional shift was semantically integrated with ease, it triggered a syntactic re-evaluation process likely to raise attention.” In other words, we could easily understand what Shakespeare meant, but his use of slippery syntax forced us to pay more attention. Brain measurements, using EEG (electroencephalogram), have been able to demonstrate that these functional shifts are measurably more stimulating than just plain old semantic novelty.
⁴

Davis also notes the “closeness of functional shift to metaphor” and goes on to describe it as “that characteristic mental conversion that Shakespeare so loved.” Some of Shakespeare’s functional shifts were highly compressed and therefore more potent metaphors; “spaniell’d me,” for example, is a highly compressed form of “followed at my heels like a spaniel.” That makes me wonder about the closeness of the relationship between metaphors and idioms and the shift they require.

Neuro-linguists are using their new high-tech tools to look carefully into idiom processing and comprehension. A look at the titles of some recent papers reveals the state of the art:

“Left but Not Right Temporal Involvement in Opaque Idiom Comprehension,”
2004.

“Evidence of Bilateral Involvement in Idiom Comprehension, an fMRI Study,”
2007.

“Idiom Comprehension: A Prefrontal Task?”
2008.
⁵

Though the
jury is still out
on the specifics, it’s clear that idiom comprehension involves more of the brain than processing the equivalent purely literal phrase. And though I haven’t found any research specifically on functional shiftiness and idioms, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to draw an analogy between the two and in so doing perhaps partially explain the enduring popularity of idioms.

Further phrenological findings show that, since written Chinese is pictographic rather than alphabetic, the Chinese use different parts of their brains to read. Maryanne Wolf reports on this in her fascinating book on the history of reading,
Proust and the Squid
. She also points out that reading is evolutionarily a very recent activity. And thus it’s highly unnatural. We have no neuro-biological systems that have evolved expressly to support the deciphering of the frozen outpourings of other minds. You are at this precise moment engaged in one of the miracles of brain plasticity—reading. Wolf also points out another remarkable aspect of reading, which she summarizes using Proust’s elegant prose: You and I are both engaged in “that fruitful miracle of communicating in the midst of solitude.”
⁶

Getting back to more general anatomical astonishments—it’s not just the insides of Japanese midriffs that seem more important than ours. While for us
navel gazing
isn’t to be recommended, it seems watching Japanese navels could be much more useful and entertaining. The Japanese, when they regret something deeply, “gnaw on their own navels.” When sulking they “twist their navels.” But that’s the least of their navel talents—when indicating something is laughable, they accuse one another of “making tea with their navels.” A Yiddish speaker can insult you by telling you that “onions should grow in your navel.” In one part of South Africa a common greeting among Xhosa speakers consists in asking “where is your navel,” which is their way of asking where you are from. It refers to the practice of burying the placenta of a newborn at the doorway of its family’s house. Hindi has a similar idiom.

Okay, enough
navel gazing
and on to other body parts…

I swear
I’m not pulling your leg
or, as the Russians would say, “I’m not hanging noodles on your ears.” A similar protestation for a German would be to “let a bear loose on someone,” and for a Spaniard to “grab someone’s hair.” A Japanese who wanted to dupe someone would more specifically “pull the hair out of their nostrils.” Meanwhile, “hanging something from your nose” in Japan means to be vain. To dupe someone in Czech is, alarmingly, to “hang balls on his nose.” Curiously, a Yiddish speaker needs a
hole in the head
like she needs a “lung and liver on her nose.” Whereas we
split hairs,
the French are more exacting; they “cut a hair in four.”

As noted above, the Japanese have particularly talented anatomies. When they want something badly, they say it’s “like a hand coming out of one’s throat.” When gasping for breath one “breathes through his shoulder.” An enterprising Arab seizes an opportunity by knowing “where to bite the shoulder.” A Russian who “bites the elbow” is
crying over spilt milk
. To try to charm someone, the Japanese “speak through the nose.” And when they have something on their minds, i.e., they are concerned, they “make their eyebrows cloudy.” Sometimes the Japanese have good reason to have cloudy eyebrows; when something bad comes to light they say, “one’s buttocks split.”

Speaking of the hind area, when we say someone is a
brown-noser
or
butt kisser
, similarly servile Italians are “foot-lickers.” Equivalent Hindi speakers more specifically “lick the soles of the feet” (they have a related expression that translates as “foot nectar,” meaning “water in which the feet of an idol or of a respected personage have been washed”). A groveling Russian,
on the other hand,
“licks eye,” whereas a submissive Spaniard would be a “belly with calluses.” The Japanese expression for a toady is excrementally evocative; it literally means “goldfish poop.”

Enough preamble; let’s get into the heart (and belly) of the wonderful world of anatomical idioms, starting from the top:

HEAD & NECK & HAIR

• To grab someone’s hair:
  to pull someone’s leg (Spanish)
  
• To let one’s hair grow white in the sun:
  to idle one’s life away (Hindi)
  
• The coat of hair is good:
  to be from a good family (Japanese)
  
• To bend the spiral of hair on the crown of one’s head:
  to become nasty (Japanese)
  
• To devour hair from head:
  to eat one out of house and home (German)
  
• Anger hair points to heaven:
  to be livid, hopping mad (Japanese)
  
• Not to leave a hair on one’s head:
  to beat soundly (Hindi)
  
• Feeling that hair on the back of head is pulled back:
  reluctantly (Japanese)
  
• A single hair from nine oxen:
  a drop in a bucket (Chinese)
  
• To cut a hair in four:
  to split hairs (French)
  
• To pull the hair out of someone’s nostrils:
  to dupe someone (Japanese)
  
• Smoke belches from the seven openings on the head:
  very angry (Chinese)
  
• To squeeze one’s head:
  to rack one’s brain (Japanese)
  
• To eat the brain of:
  to bore with chatter (Hindi)
  
• To empty the brain:
  to tire oneself by talking too much (Hindi)
  
• Good health on your head:
  be well (Yiddish)
  
• Go twist your own head:
  go fly a kite (Yiddish)
  
• You’re climbing on my head:
  you’re getting on my nerves (Arabic)
  
• A two-headed woman:
  a pregnant woman (Hindi)
  
• A neck doesn’t turn:
  heavily in debt (Japanese)
  
• To ride on the neck:
  to dominate (Hindi)
  
• Get your jaw dislocated:
  die laughing (Japanese)
  

FACE

• What is written on the brow:
  destiny (Hindi)
  
• To notch in the forehead:
  to commit to memory, to remember well (Russian)
  
• Forehead to forehead:
  face to face (Russian)
  
• Seven inches in a forehead:
  as wise as Solomon (Russian)
  
• To puff up cheeks:
  to gossip (Spanish, Chile)
  
• The face to be noseless:
  without shame (Hindi)
  
• A face full of spring air:
  radiant with happiness (Chinese)
  
• A stepmother’s face:
  an unsmiling face, a sullen look (Chinese)
  
• To make one’s face cloudy:
  to look glum (Japanese)
  
• A salty face:
  a sullen face (Japanese)
  
• A flame comes out of one’s face:
  blush (Japanese)
  
• Have the face of fixed cement:
  have a lot of nerve (Spanish)
  
• To suck with the face down:
  to be silly, ignorant (Hindi)
  
• Take by the chin:
  coax, appease (Hindi)
  
• To be left with the square face:
  to be very surprised (Spanish, Mexico)
  
• To use someone with one’s chin:
  to order someone around (Japanese)
  
• To stick one’s chin out:
  to become exhausted (Japanese)
  

EYES

• Flames licking at one’s eyebrows:
  a desperate situation (Chinese)
  
• Urgent like eyebrows on fire:
  extremely urgent (Chinese)
  
• With dancing eyebrows and a radiant face:
  enraptured (Chinese)
  
• Something that causes one to put saliva on one’s eyebrows:
  a fake (Japanese)
  
• To put saliva on one’s eyebrows:
  to take with a grain of salt (Japanese)
  
• To open knitted brows:
  to breathe freely again (Japanese)
  
• Hit not the eyebrow but right in the eye:
  hit the nail on the head (Russian)
  
• To make one’s eyebrows cloudy:
  to be concerned (Japanese)
  
• To burn one’s eyebrows:
  to study hard (Spanish)
  
• The curtains:
  the eyelids (Spanish, Cuba)
  
• To throw powder in your eyes:
  to kid yourself (French)
  
• To lick eye:
  to kiss up (Spanish, Puerto Rico)
  
• To be a piece of meat with eyes:
  to be useless (Spanish, Dominican Republic)
  
• Eyes without pupils:
  look but not see (Chinese)
  
• To change one’s eye color:
  to have a serious look (Japanese)
  
• While one’s eyes are still black:
  while alive (Japanese)
  
• To get one’s eyes stolen:
  to be dazzled (Japanese)
  
• To lower the outside corners of one’s eyes:
  to be pleased (Japanese)
  
• To make the outside corners of one’s eyes stand up:
  to nitpick (Japanese)
  
• To look at someone with white eyes:
  to look at someone disdainfully (Japanese)
  
• To bring four eyes together:
  to meet the glance (Hindi)
  
• Poison for one’s eyes:
  too much of a temptation (Japanese)
  
• To throw an eye at:
  to guard, to mind (Yiddish)