Useful words with no English equivalent

Surprisingly, they're not all long, Germanic compound words (generally a font of useful no-equivalent words):

8. Tartle (Scots)
The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can't quite remember.
9. Koi No Yokan (Japanese)
The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.
10. Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego)
This word captures that special look shared between two people, when both are wishing that the other would do something that they both want, but neither want to do.

Tartle is something I often experience, because I'm really, embarrassingly terrible with names.

14 wonderful words with no English equivalent

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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http://twitter.com/chr15_eat0n chris eaton

my favorite is “fiaca” – the argentine spanish word for the feeling you get — perhaps on a sunday afternoon — when you don’t want to do anything.
- cdh1971
  
  The Argentinians might call it fiaca…I call it ‘The Lifestyle’.
- avraamov
  
  ‘a favourite of mine -
  
  Pilkunnussija (Finnish)
  
  Literally: a comma fucker. A pedant; a person who corrects trivial or meaningless things.
  
  there’s some real beauty to be found here:
  
  http://betterthanenglish.com/
  - Jan_Willem
    
    We have exactly the same word in Dutch: “kommaneuker”, although it’s commonly used to refer to spelling nazis. More general fussbodies are called “mierenneuker”, meaning ant fucker.
    - Symbiote
      
      The equivalent to the latter in English is probably “nitpicker”, often used as a verb (“stop nitpicking!”).
anonymity86

I’d like to add one: Mechutanim (transliterated, so forgive the spelling) I believe it is a Yiddish word and it refers to the relationship with your child’s in-laws. For example, if my parents were to introduce my wife’s parents to someone at a party they could say “I’d like you to meet my mechutanim…” I have never found an English equivalent to that word.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  We just call them in-laws. I’d like you to meet my in-laws, Herb and Eve.
  - YourOldBuddy
    
    A herbeve?
http://weirdly.net Jacob Ewing

Tartle is something I often experience, because I’m really, embarrassingly terrible with names.

You and me both, … err… … ..umm…
- ashypete
  
  My wife is particularly bad with names, a fact which is made worse by the fact that she teaches a few hundred students every year – that’s many times when you can embarrass yourself with not remembering a name. So, if we run into one of her old students, her strategy is to introduce me and I ask the person for their name as politely as I can. This technique works very well for her but it obviously only works if you have a willing accomplice.
http://profiles.google.com/prismaticspray Alec Story

There is an old word in English that means “the day after tomorrow” (see number 5): overmorrow. It’s counterpart is ereyesterday.

Help me bring them back!
- Gerhard Roth
  
  The same words still exist in modern German: “Übermorgen” and “Vorgestern”
  - ChuckTV
    
    and Chinese!
    
    overmorrow = houtian (后天）
    ereyesterday = qiantian (前天）
    - http://twitter.com/EleOcho L8
      
      And Spanish.
      
      overmorrow = pasadomañana
      eresterday = antier
      - CastanhasDoPara
        
        And Portuguese!
        
        overmorrow = depois de amanhã
        (edit, I also would think passadamanhã would work but can find no reference to it, and it’s not that important. Though if it is not legitimate Portuguese I think it should be adopted too.)
        
        ereyesterday = anteontem
      - benher
        
        And Japanese
        overmorrow = Asatte 明後日eresterday = Ototoi 一昨日
      - joelogs
        
        And Tagalog!
        (sa) makalawa – day after tomorrow
        kamakalawa – day before yesterday
      - Paul Renault
        
        Lendemain Surlendemain and avant-hier in French.
        
        /Oy, brain wasn’t working…
      - jhoosier
        
        I always learned it as “anteayer”, literally “before yesterday”. But maybe that’s just me being a Pilkunnussija.
      - CastanhasDoPara
        
        I’ve heard this too.
        
        Both seem correct though.
- dr15
  
  We also have those words in Hebrew.
  overmorrow = machrataim
  ereyesterday = shilshom
  - Amber Light
    
    And Hindi. But the word for both overmorrow and ereyesterday is the same – pursau !!
    - Amber Light
      
      Tamil :
      overmorrow – marunaal
      ereyesterday – mundanethu
      
      :) seriously.. why do we still use English at all!
      - http://www.facebook.com/nyrge Anders Nygaard
        
        Norwegian:
        overmorrow: overimorgen
        ereyesterday: forgårs.
        
        You anglos are way behind. :)
- Hans von Tagg
  
  “Tomorrow tomorrow” is the proper English term. Just ask any five-year-old!
- http://www.facebook.com/odette.mohammed Odette Mohammed
  
  And also in Afrikaans
  
  Oormôre = the day after tomorrow
  Eergister – the day before yesterday
capnmarrrrk

Schadenfreude!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9B-ZoS0wvU
- NateXT
  
  Pfffft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3_DjiLLDfo
- Theo Grace
  
  Epicaracacy has been in the English language since before the modern English language existed and is a far better word for the exact same concept. Also (though this may be my lack of German) it is my understanding that schadenfreude only applies if you witness their discomfort and not, for example, if you were to say, hear it described over the phone after the event. Epicaracacy is pleasure at anothers discomfort regardless of if you directly observe it.
  - cdh1971
    
    Schadenfreude has entered the English language and is now a loan word, and like many loan words, perhaps the meaning in English is slightly different from the donor language.
http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

14. Jozxyqk (Cat)

It’s the sound you make when you get your sexual organs trapped in something.
- welcomeabored
  
  Willingly or unwillingly?
  - ldobe
    
    Moon-farmer: “first the one, then th’other’n”
Timothy Krause

9. Koi No Yokan (Japanese)

The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.

I believe the English phrase for this is love at first sight. Popular variants are eros, destiny, and hormones.
- Timothy Krause
  
  When experienced by a given male many times in rapid succession, with many subjects, and little reciprocity, I call it stalkery shiverin’. But that’s just an idiolect of mine.
- http://profiles.google.com/max.kingsbury Max Kingsbury
  
  Koi No Yokan is a three word phrase (“omen of love”), and we have an extremely similar phrase (love at first sight) in English. I’m not sure why it is included in this list.
- Lilah
  
  They are not the same. If you experience koi no yokan, you have not fallen in love. Koi no yokan is the feeling that the two of you will come to love each other in the future. (one of) The Japanese terms for love at first sight is “hitomebore”.
  - Timothy Krause
    
    That’s arguably true about love at first sight, and who knows what love *really* is, anyway? But thanks for the information!
- jhoosier
  
  It’s hard to say whether this is a word or not. It’s got a particle in the middle (no) to connect two nouns. That’s what always gets me about these articles. They often include what would be phrases in the other language.
- Paul Renault
  
  Not quite the same meaning. Love at first sight is often just by one person, and the Japanese phrase implies both will be falling in love – not now, but soon.
  
  In french, it’s ‘coup de foudre’ – thunderbolt.
http://www.facebook.com/charles.lenchner Charles Lenchner

Hebrew: “Davka”. Sometimes it means “on purpose”. But it is used as a one word exclamation for why you did something annoying or mean.
A: why didn’t you make a new pot of coffee after finishing the last one?
B: Davka!
- TheMadLibrarian
  
  D’oh!
- Lee Brown
  
  I believe the English version of this is – Because fuck you, thats why!
dioptase

Ah, but the beauty of English is that it’s not above appropriating any word from any language we find useful. Which is why it’s such a weird stew.

For fun, think of synonyms for common words and try to trace the origins of each. You get Greek, Latin, French, German, Celtic, and other versions of basically the same word. So we even steal words we already have “native” versions of.
- hymenopterid
  
  And we have words like conservative, conservator, and conservationist that mean wildly different things.
  I keep trying to tell people that I’m a cleric, but they insist I’m just a lowly clerk.
Bevatron Repairman

Can anyone help me out with the following: I seem to recall reading about a Russian word that is the emotion one feels for someone that one used to be — but is no longer — in love with. I guess sort of a nostalgia for the the way one used to feel. I thought it nicely captured a real emotion that’s not named in English.
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  If you ever find out; let me know.
Timothy Krause

Nabokov’s disquisition on poshlost in Nikolai Gogol springs to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poshlost
http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait

Brazilians often brag that portuguese has exclusivity for the word ‘saudade’ which is the feeling you feel when you miss someone, some place, or something dearly (different from nostalgia).
- Garrett Eaton
  
  Yeah! I was going to mention this one!
- http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley
  
  The Japanese say natsukashii for roughly this, though there’s definitely an element of nostalgia also wrapped up in the word.
  
  EDIT: I now see someone has already mentioned this word below!
- WhyBother
  
  In English that would be a “to long for something” or just the state of “longing”. This is as opposed to “yearning for” or “pining for” something. You don’t hear it used much except in period peaces set in the Victorian era, where it tends to be used as polite hyperbole (as in, “I long for another good party”).
  
  At this point, we have slightly more words that we care to use. They sort of come in and out of fashion every few years.
Timothy Krause

Pålegg would be covered by cold cuts in most, non-Nutellaic, cases.

Lagom would be covered by lukewarm, middling, or perfect depending on the context: that is, unless lagom has a sense that they’re not providing and that I’m ignorant of.

I find the inclusion of many of these words confusing, as they would seem to have multiple English equivalents.
- lagom
  
  Oh, but “lagom” can refer to far more things than lukewarm can be used for. It can be an amount (How much coffee do you want? A lagom amount), a temperature (should I turn the thermostat up? No, it’s lagom), or pretty much anything one could have an opinion on.
  
  It is not middling because it does not necessarily refer to the mathematical average or mean. It is the right amount, even if it is a bit more or less than the middle. “Perfect” has a more positive or idealized ring to it than lagom does, but “sufficient” is too dry… It is the sweet spot, it is in balance, it is tailored to the person (a lagom size sweater depends on the wearer), it is hard to quantify without context but precise in the intent with which it is used.
  
  It’s difficult to make an exact definition, which is why it is such a great word. Swedish does have more direct equivalents to the words you listed (ljummen, medelstor, perfekt), but lagom captures and extends the right parts of these concepts in a very lagom way.
  - CastanhasDoPara
    
    optimum
  - Timothy Krause
    
    Middling class, of middling height: sounds fine to me.
    
    I forget the etymology of lukewarm, but it’s something like “warmly warm” originally: also lagom close to what you’re saying. :D
- http://www.facebook.com/nyrge Anders Nygaard
  
  Not so sure about “pålegg”. It’s anything you could add to bread; in fact, the moment it goes on bread, it becomes “pålegg”. “Topping” would do it, except you can only use it for stuff on top of bread. Cake toppings are not “pålegg”.
  Strangely, it can also mean an injunction or other official order.
  - Jonathan Roberts
    
    Sandwich filling?
  - CastanhasDoPara
    
    Ha, just hit me this morning.
    
    Fixings usually shortened to fixin’s.
gwailo_joe

The Japanese example used is not the best: there are many nebulous and interesting words in that language…and of course now that I’m typing I draw a blank: typical.

But なつかしい（natsukashii) is a good one: it’s used as a descriptive feeling of nostalgia. Very useful and often used…and while the English is adequate…rarely will you hear old friends around old photos exclaim

“Ahahaha! Remember that night?! Nostalgic!”
- jhoosier
  
  Genki, for one. Also, ねこじた (nekojita), lit. “cat’s tongue”, to describe someone who can’t stand overly hot (temperature) food.
- benher
  
  Natsukashii is awesome! And I agree, there may be better examples than Koi no Kan.
  
  Some personal favs not available in English:
  
  Yakezake 自棄酒 – drowning ones sorrows in drink
  Mottaenai 勿体無い – “what a waste” (broad nuance such as in spilled milk, unrealized potential, )
  Karoshi 過労死 – death by overwork
  Ronin ロニン – The masterless samurai – now it means the kid who takes a year or two off before University because they need to study harder for entrance exams
  
  And the classic:
  Otsukaresama お疲れ様 – “Thank you for your hard work.”It’s perfect for greeting a co-worker – you get to say “hi” and let them know you appreciate your efforts all at once.
  
  Shit… it’s hard to just think them up off the cuff in such an analytical fashion…
  Japanese words naturally have different spectrums and nuance than English words and play a key role in shaping the culture (and visa-versa)
  - benher
    
    Also, forgot the neo-logisms that come from English but don’t go back to English! Such as:
    
    My Boom マイブーム – things that I am into right now!
    Heartful ハートフル – Somewhere between emotionally moving and joyful
    
    or the ever nebulous:
    
    Skinship スキンシップ – imagine “friendship” but it means like a friendly body touch. The meaning is so broad, it can refer to anything from patting your kids on the head to grabbing your lover’s booty under the table.
  - http://greggman.com greggman
    
    I’d add in many of the onomatopoeia words like
    
    sakusaku: a light crunch like biting into a croissant
    karikari: a harder crunch like corn chips
    tsurutsuru: smooth like polished marble.
Timothy Krause

On the other end, I’ve always loved the Anglo-Saxon morningceald, literally, “morningcold,” which is how cold Wiglaf tells the Geats their spears will be when tribes come a’maraudin’ in Beowulf, i.e., they’ll be coming for us before dawn, we’re hella fucked. I wonder if there are non-English equivalents?
- Timothy Krause
  
  Derp, that’s morgenceald.
http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075

OK, but I’ve heard the French have no word for “entrepreneur” or “café.”
- http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley
  
  Those words have such a “I don’t know what” quality about them.
BunnyShank

Last night I had a need for a word describing roughly “appreciating jealousy”: the joy you feel from knowing someone who has it good. Found out this morning its “mudita” in Sanskrit.
10xor01

Gemütlichkeit is one that I like.
rob_cornelius

my favourite is a Hawaiian word “giri-giri” which is a hair such as an eyebrow hair that refuses to stay neatly put.
- twianto
  
  That’s almost certainly not Hawaiian (the Polynesian language); most likely a loan from the Japanese word “giri giri,” just given a somewhat different meaning, as is the case with many loanwords.
  - http://greggman.com greggman
    
    It’s certainly not Hawaiian because there is no ‘r’ in the Hawaiian Alphabet. ;-)
    
    A E I O U H K L M N P W
- TheMadLibrarian
  
  Giri-giri is actually more like a cowlick, the little whorl of hair on the back of someone’s head. The more giri-giri a child has, the more kolohe (rascally) they will be. I think we stole it from Japanese and incorporated it into Pidgin. I’ve never heard it used for a ‘wild hair’ before.
capnmarrrrk

I have a friend who is looking for “a definition for the feeling of missing some one who is right there with you”

What can you cunning linguists bring to me?
- joe blough
  
  iPhone?
http://profile.yahoo.com/OMHO6ER5QJE3SIZ35VAXIRCLYM Stephan

As a German I was always proud of the fact that “Angst” doesn’t have an english equivalent.
- helenaglory
  
  Trepidation? Or perhaps, simply… angst?
  
  I speak German, albeit not that well. What is the difference between the German “angst” and the English?
  - twianto
    
    Nah, German “Angst” is the most common word for “fear,” “to be afraid” etc. Not ambiguous at all. Much less specific than “angst” in English.
    - WhyBother
      
      So wouldn’t the English equivalent to the broader German form of “angst” be “fear”?
      - twianto
        
        Yes. German “Angst” = “fear,” more or less. Definitely not the same meaning as “angst” in English.
        
        If anything, German doesn’t have a good word for “angst” as used in English.
        
        Loanwords are funny…
http://profile.yahoo.com/OMHO6ER5QJE3SIZ35VAXIRCLYM Stephan

But it also filled me with a lot of “Angst”…
Sparrow

One that most makers should know is “farpotshket”,the Yiddish word for broken because someone tried to fix it.
- cellocgw
  
  As in “the Fahrvergnügen” is farpotrshket because of the shvertunken?
- http://www.facebook.com/nyrge Anders Nygaard
  
  Aha! farpotschket = scandinavian ”forkludret” – overklutzed? beclodded?
cellocgw

I was thinking that the American version, at least, of English has no equivalent of “common sense.”
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd put all those words “which spend their time doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places” to good use in ‘The Meaning of Liff’, describing things that have no words.
http://folk.uio.no/alied/TMoL.html
My favourites: Ely, Godalming, Wrabness
Boris Bartlog

German ‘tüchtig’ has no good translation in English. Four hundred years ago ‘doughty’ likely meant about the same thing but the modern usage is pretty much purely arch / satirical…
- http://www.facebook.com/nyrge Anders Nygaard
  
  Is that like Scandinavian “dyktig” meaning skilled, “dydig” meaning virtuous, or “tuktet” meaning coved? Or all at once?
  - Boris Bartlog
    
    Sounds like the first one is cognate, though ‘skilled’ is only one possible contextual meaning.
Ms. Anne Thrope

Chi Chin pui pui – words to kiss it and make it feel better with the power of abracadadra and toadsgoboad rolled into Japanese
Ian Evans

Mudita (Pali & Sanskrit) : “joy. It is especially sympathetic or vicarious joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being” (paraphrased from wikipedia)

Like schadenfruede, but not.
http://twitter.com/PaulDavisThe1st Paul Davis

a whole book full of such things:

http://www.amazon.com/They-Have-Word-Lighthearted-Untranslatable/dp/1889330469
Tudza White

I like this bit from Language Log http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4416

And James Eagle sent in this one

Wade Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, 2011:In Tibetan, there is no word for a mountain summit; the very place the British so avidly sought, their highest goal, did not even exist in the language of their Sherpa porters.

James observes that

His claim that “no word for”=”does not exist in the language” would be rather silly even if he hadn’t accidentally refuted it in the *very same sentence* by highlighting that English has no word for “mountain summit” either…
- Hans von Tagg
  
  Uhh, no. The English word is summit. Works as a verb, too.
Jord

Really missing in the list is the Dutch “gezellig”. Hard to translate, but it is used for every situation where two or more people are together and the atmosphere is “fine” or better than “fine”.

It can also be used for future happenings: shall we go to the zoo? Ja, gezellig! Indicating that the answering person is looking forward to being together at the zoo.

Personal note: with the Dutch everything must be “gezellig” as well, which can be seen as a form of social pressure.
Nicky G

Koi no yokan — fantastic, perfectly describes a state I’ve been in for the past month or so. It’s good. :)
s2redux

Don’t know if it’s useful, but I’ve enjoyed ilunga for the past few years. IIRC, it was voted the “most untranslatable word” back in the early ‘naughts. Copied this into my notes from somewhere: Described as a word from the Bantu language of Tshiluba, said to mean “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time”.

What makes it extra fun is that ilunga is apparently disputed as being a real term in the Tshiluba tongue; rather, it might simply be a proper name. (But no doubt a name with a great story attached ;-)
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

Packbawky
http://www.facebook.com/privetera Rocco Privetera

I just had a heated argu-discussion with the girlfriend about a similar thing a day ago. I do a few creative projects and sometimes I get into a focused jag on them, and she was asking if what I was doing was fun. Well, no, I wouldn’t call it fun, exactly, I’m not feeling fun. Compulsion? yeah, maybe a little, but I know the out-of-control feeling of compulsion and that’s not it. She then said “Cathexis” and showed me the definition and I didn’t think that was it either.

The closest I could put it into words was something like “the zen-like no-happy zone when you are completely doing something you were designed to do, fulling your purpose, so much that you know you can’t stop without finishing”. As an example I postulated that scratching a cat’s happy bump that makes it lick – it’s doing what it’s wired to and utterly consumed by it – but when you stop the cat isn’t “happy” about it per se. They actually look pretty pissed.

And it’s not happy/sad/good/bad – I imagine a compulsive problem solver solving a problem and a mountain lion tearing apart a baby both are feeling something similar. It’s just a feeling like “right now I’m doing that thing I do very well and I’m doing a lot of it and it feels purposeful”.

What’s that word?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Destinating?
  - http://www.facebook.com/privetera Rocco Privetera
    
    Could just be breathing and eating if that’s all you are designed to do (like a mollusk) so travel isn’t necessary. Its almost like “fully expressing my potential in committed action”.
sam1148

How does one use “Tartle” in a sentence? “I tartled”…”..there was some tarteling when I was asked to introduce my friends”.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Well, next time, crack a window.
http://www.facebook.com/odette.mohammed Odette Mohammed

In Afrikaans the word for “on purpose” is “aspris”. But colloquially the word can be used in a sentence like “don’t be aspris”, meaning something like, “Don’t be deliberately difficult”.
- http://www.facebook.com/privetera Rocco Privetera
  
  Whoa – this sounds closer to what I was asking above!
http://www.facebook.com/mountainbreaker Ian Kerr

#10 really captures my entire young-adult life…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tom-Rombouts/100001468788152 Tom Rombouts

Hi -

I am kind of surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but there was an entire 2007 book roughly based on this idea, “The Meaning of Tingo” (It was featured on NPR when it first came out. One of my favorites was a Japanese word to mean a woman who was attractive from the rear, but not from the front.) http://www.amazon.com/The-Meaning-Tingo-Extraordinary-Around/dp/B002ZNJWPY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358446452&sr=8-1&keywords=tingo

- Tom
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  Dang it Tom, that’s half a comment. What was the Japanese word you allude to?
  
  And, reluctantly I add, English does indeed have a word for that concept: butterface.
  
  Ah, there it is, bakku-shan.
http://twitter.com/criminalcrafts Miss Demeanor

Wanker, the Brits have wanker- short, elegant, to the point without an American equivalent
dlelash

Olfrygt: Danish word describing the fear that arrives when you are out of town and unable to find a place to get a beer.
Literally means Ale-Fright. It is originally spelled Ølfrygt.
wanderingwayfarer

For more fun words of these sorts, look up “They Have A Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases” by Howard Rheingold.

EDIT: whoops, I see someone beat me to the punch!