Category: Everyday life

Pocałować klamkę

Meaning:

Lit. “to kiss the doorknob”. This is used to say that someone tried to meet a person or enter a building in order to buy something, get some information or, say, attend a concert, but wasn’t let in or the person she/he wanted to meet wasn’t there.

The expression itself is fairly neutral, not necessarily suggesting bad intentions of the hosting party, but is quite often used to say that, for instance, the manager actually was at the office,but simply did not want to talk to an employee and instructed her/his secretary to say she/he’s out.

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Brać na klatę

Meaning:

Lit. “to take on the chest” which figuratively means to take responsibility, take over some difficult or inconvenient task, especially if multiple people could take over but only one of them volunteers. This colloquial expression stems from the most common bench press exercise in which you are able to “take on” a specific weight attached to barbells. In Poland’s gyms you can quite often hear that somebody “bierze na klatę 120” which means he is able to do bench pressing with 120 kilograms on the bar. A similar expression “przyjąć na klatę” is used to describe trapping ball with chest in football.

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Kowal zawinił, Cygana powiesili

Meaning:

Lit. “it’s the blacksmith who’s guilty, but they hung the Gypsy”. You use this expression to point at an injustice and suggest that a person or an institution with more power (social, financial or political) got away with their wrongdoing while another actor with much less influence took the blame and was punished.

The source of this saying is obviously with an important role wealthy smiths have played in rural Poland while travelling Roma traditionally being outcasts and blamed for whatever crime happened while they were around.

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Tu leży pies pogrzebany

Meaning:

Lit. “that’s where the dog lies buried” which seems to have been adopted from German and is present in multiple other, not only slavic or germanic languages. It’s used to point at the cause or the focal point of whatever is being discussed. Quite often one of people in a discussion jumps in with this expression as soon as he or she hears about whatever seems to be a key factor. It  therefore also serves to stress one’s own opinion.

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Wyjść po angielsku

Meaning:

Lit. “to leave in an English manner/take an English leave”. Which is used to describe people leaving a party without saying a proper “goodbye” and in case of old-fashioned folk, drinking a goodbye vodka shot (“strzemienny”). Such a behaviour is not well liked by partygoers, but in every group of good friends there is at least one who prefers to vanish in the night while the others are busy dancing, drinking or talking. Mention this to a German and he or she will reply: “das ist doch polnischer Abgang” as in Germany you call this a Polish manner. There are probably more variants in other countries.

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