Can’t stereotype my tingo: As a huge fan of neologism, the poetry of idiom and general language geekery, it gladdens my heart to hear of a new book collecting words with no precise English equivalents. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s The Meaning Of Tingo sounds like linguistic jalebi (via Boing Boing):

The Japanese have bakku-shan – a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front. Then there’s a nakkele – a man who licks whatever the food has been served on (from Tulu, India). [Link]

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p>Wayne’s World fans already have ‘scud,’ a bakku-shan equivalent dating back to the first Gulf War. Tulu is, of course, Aishwarya Rai’s native tongue. Mmm, lickable dishy.

You know how poets, writers and Mr. Everything Comes From India sit around at desi parties and smoky cafés bemoaning what they miss about the old country? ‘Beta, how can you explain the meaning of x? It’s not translatable. Only a true x would know about x~ness.’ Here’s to moody linguistic ethnocentrism, this from Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk:

The key, he said, is to understand the concept of huzun. This Turkish word describes a kind of melancholy, he says, not so much a personal state as one shared by an entire society, a mood of resigned despair for the great past… “The thought behind huzun was: People in Europe are happy, but we are doomed…” [Link]

I’ll throw one out: in Punjabi, nakhreli, a finicky woman (from nakhra karna, to turn up your nose at everything). In the highly functional, less ornamented American culture, there’s no exact equivalent. Or in Spanish, the idiom ‘dar calabazas’ — to give pumpkins, meaning to jilt or ignore.

… nakhur, Persian for “camel that won’t give milk until her nostrils are tickled”… tsuji-giri is Japanese for “trying out a new sword on a passer-by”… [Link]

I wonder whether nakhur is related to nakhreli. Here are other poignancies:

The French have Saint-Glinglin to mean a date that is put off indefinitely… Madogiwazoku… Japanese window gazers (office workers who sit at desks with little to do)… [Link]

Kummerspeck is a German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating…

A Putzfimmel is a mania for cleaning and Drachenfutter – literally translated as dragon fodder – are the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives. Or there’s die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen – to stick one’s lower lip out in a sulk (literally, to play the insulted liver sausage). Perhaps it’s a Backpfeifengesicht – a face that cries out for a fist in it…

… uitwaaien is Dutch for walking in windy weather for fun…

The Albanians exhibit a strange fascination for facial hair… Madh means a bushy moustache, posht is a moustache hanging down at the ends and fshes is a long broom-like moustache with bristly hairs… Vetullkalem describes pencil-thin eyebrows, vetullperpjekur are joined together eyebrows and those arched like the crescent moon are vetullhen… [Link]

The Inuit, meanwhile, rely on areodjarekput, the practice of exchanging wives for a few days, to combat the monotony of the long arctic night… mahj – Persian for looking beautiful after a disease – and the wonderful Italian word for one tanned by sun lamp, slampadato. [Link]

… his favourite is the word in the title, tingo, which is from the Pascuense language of Easter Island and means to borrow objects from a friend’s house, one by one, until there is nothing left. [Link]

“A frustration in compiling this book has been finding wonderful words that I’ve been unable to verify, and so had to leave out,” he said. “Age-otori for example, a Japanese word which supposedly means ‘to look worse after a haircut’ – I’ve been there…” [Link]

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p>And some contributions from BBC readers:

In Afrikaans we sometimes call a stapler, a ‘pampiervampier’. Literally, ‘paper-vampire’… From German, “Blechlawine” literally a “metal avalanche” which is a long queue of stationary cars on the Autobahn. [Link]

Don’t miss Dick & Garlick, a compendium of Hinglish, Tamlish, Bonglish and related slang.