Don't believe anything on telly or the radio

[karohemd]

You might have watched "Have I Got News for You" or listened to "The News Quiz" on Radio 4 last week which both mentioned a new dictionary of foreign words that can only be expressed as a complicated phrase in English.

There's a German entry called "Tantenverführer" (literally "a seducer of aunts" and allegedly meaning "a young man whose excessively good intentions suggest suspicious motives". Interestingly, as a German, I (and the other Germans in the office) have never come across "Tantenverführer" and a Google search limited to results in German reveals no hits whatsover.

As the Welsh users on the Times Online website suggest that the Welsh word isn't real, either, could this all be made up for the sake of comedy quizzes?

Comments

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

Not an Austrian one either! Leo doesn't recognise it either

[matgb]

That does indeed look good, and I'd not heard of it before, so double thankee—same venue as Inferno, just around the corner from the Fox, so not a bad plan that.

It wouldn't surprise me TBH. It did sound like a daft idea for a book, although the translation "stocking filler" did make sense.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Any Google hits seem to refer to this alleged German word no German speaker seems to have heard of and which doesn't turn up in German searches. A bit dodgy. It could be some rather limited regional use (like the French one, need to check that with colleagues but at least it's stated that it's a dialect term).

BTW, I'm impressed at your commenting to two posts at the same time. ;o)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Let's face it, it would be a lot easier to make a bunch of these words up rather than actually research them.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Very true. Makes you think, though.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

Yubisaki 指先 is fingertip and bijin 美人 is beautiful person, so the parts of the Japanese sort of make sense. Don't know what a native speaker would make of it though.

送り(okuri)has the sense of sending something or escorting someone, but the other bit just comes back as mistress! So, sort of, but not sure.

I do like chikan 痴漢 - for train molesters. Well, the word not the action.