I’ve been sitting around daydreaming when I should be writing this article (about daydreaming). But I’ve returned from being away with the fairies now and am ready to share with you some of my favourite phrases about wool-gathering from languages around the world.
Let’s start with a great phrase about being in a reverie that I learnt in Mexico, which is pensando en el agujero de la dona. It means “pondering the hole of the doughnut”. A similar (and perhaps even better) version is pensando en la inmortalidad del cangrejo, or “pondering the immortality of the crab”.
On a side note, when I’m daydreaming I often ponder crabs, but not so much their immortality. Instead I wonder why they have such a hatred of boiling water. The most likely answer is that they worry heated water vapour makes them look ugly (shellfish steam issues).
Anyway, moving swiftly on (or sideways) from that terrible joke, let’s get back to more international daydreaming expressions. A Brazilian phrase that is somewhat similar to the crab one is pensando na morte da bezerra, or “thinking of the death of the baby cow”. A Czech variant is přemýšlet o nesmrtelnosti chrousta. It means “thinking about the immortality of the maybug”.
Another Czech expression (Czechspression?) for zoning out, or just generally being absent-minded, is čumět do blba. It means “staring into stupidity”. A similar phrase from Austrian German is ins Narrenkastl schaun. It means “looking into the fool’s cupboard”. And there’s an old word from Bavarian German that refers to when your eyes go out of focus and, rather than focusing them again, you just stare at nothing for a bit. The word is Goaßgschau, and it means “goat stare”.
A phrase from Cuban Spanish for when someone’s mind is elsewhere is en Belén con los pastores. It means “in Bethlehem with the shepherds”. And from other Spanish-speaking countries we have “thinking about the shrews” (Iberian Spanish), “thinking about the rooster’s balls” (Colombian Spanish), “thinking of little pregnant birds” (Venezuelan Spanish), “catching octopuses” (Andalucian Spanish), and, my absolute favourite, from Chilean Spanish… “gone to the cheeses”.
There’s a wonderful colloquial Greek phrase, τρεις λαλούν και δυο χορεύουν. It’s used in several different ways, depending on who you speak to, but the best use of it, in my opinion, is to describe a daydreamer. It essentially means “in their head, three are playing (instruments) and two are dancing”.
Suggested Reading
How the rest of the world says ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’
The Finnish language has an especially poetic phrase about a daydreamer, which is taivaanrannan maalari, or “painter of the sky shore”. And my favourite of all things to do when painting the sky shore is to compose lists, so let me leave you with a list of five more international phrases for being distracted:
Thinking about blue almonds (Polish)
Dreaming of green horses on walls (Romanian)
Cooking pulao in your mind (Urdu)
Travelling in the mayonnaise (Brazilian Portuguese)
Swimming in watermelon juice (Egyptian Arabic)
Adam is the author of The Wheel is Spinning but the Hamster is Dead: A Journey Around the World in Idioms, Proverbs and General Nonsense.
Peter Trudgill is away
