Lit. “your own mother won’t recognize you”. The expression is used to openly threat someone with a beating so hard to change his/her appearance entirely. If you ever hear this then you can consider the situation quite serious and whoever mentions that your open enemy. Either get ready to fight or call the police.
Lit. “to shit pink”. This is used to describe a person putting an ultimate effort into trying to achieve something entirely impossible. It obviously is not used in official language as the verb “srać” is considered vulgar.
You say “choćbym się zesrał/a na różowo” to point that no matter how hard you try, what you want will not happen anyway. So it’s not worth the effort and you give it up.
Variants with different somewhat “unnatural” colours like green or gold occur but mean the same thing.
Lit. “kicked by electricity/current” which is is the most common way to say that a person was electrocuted. A more formal way would be “porażony prądem” or struck/hit by electricity but in spoken language Poles prefer the personification with electricity using its figurative legs to cause damage.
Lit. “jack-style” and the “jack” referred to is the playing card, as the word “walet” is very rarely used in different contexts.
There are two main metaphorical meanings the expression is used for: 1) being naked, mostly when bathing in a lake/sea/river 2) living in a flat or student dorm without an official registration.
Lit. “to caw” – as crows do. If this verb is referred to a person then this person is being accused of being extremely pessimistic and always having a worst possible outcome in mind. This is why other, more optimistic, people taking part in the same enterprise often say “nie kracz” – don’t caw, don’t discourage us.
The expression is very popular among Poles and is the only meaning apart from the literal one. It might stem from crows’ cawing being a bad omen.
