Friday, June 02, 2006

What are we feeling that would be better expressed in German?

...was the title of an Onion sidebar, many years ago. I can't remember their specific examples, but Elisa and I came up with several candidates this weekend:

  • the chagrin of realizing that you have once again left the house wearing your underwear inside-out.
  • the half-smug, half-abashed feeling that comes when you realize that your mother would disapprove of everything that you have eaten in the past twenty-four hours.
  • gloating over your secret plans to take revenge on someone by publishing a paper that invalidates an experiment they're doing.
...none of these are entirely hypothetical, as it happens.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions about the German equivalents?

1 comment:

Gregg P. said...

"the chagrin of realizing that you have once again left the house wearing your underwear inside-out."

I'll go with "invertilederhosen."