Lit. “to have a snake in the pocket” which refers to somebody being very thrifty, or even, stingy. Poles readily apply this to inhabitants of my hometown Kraków who are widely known to save every penny they can. And so, such a person is under no circumstances willing to put hand in their pocket as if the said reptilian was sitting there waiting to bite them.
Lit. “go seek the wind in the field”. Which is a set expression referring to something or someone that has disappeared never to be found, or even more often – has been deliberately hidden or ran away. It is used as a kind of “end of story” point to stress that the person telling a story expects the thing or the protagonist never to surface again and believes an investigation or a search party to be futile.
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.
You could translate this as “messelium with mycelium”. “Chujnia” is a vulgar way to describe a mess, problems you are in or a product or a service a low quality. The word stems from “chuj” which means “dick” or “prick” and can be used to describe a person you don’t like as in English. By adding the “-nia” suffix, a word is built describing a high concentration of pricks or an area where pricks are at work. It is used on its own to stress that you don’t like a particular situation or what you are shown or given.
“Grzybnia” means mycelium, is not vulgar at all and used mostly by biologists and mushroom pickers. The only reason for it to build the second part of the expression is that it rhymes with the first. However, the result is extremely comical as the words don’t have anything to do with each other.
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.
