Have you ever had that frustrating feeling of being at a loss for words? You know what you want to say - the perfect idiom exists in your own language - but you're speaking English, and English sadly lacks the very turn of phrase you love so much! Boris Ludwig introduces some of the "missing idioms" which we think ought to be introduced into European English... And this time, it's all about food.

Photo: Michael Maggs

Houby s octem! - a poisonous put-down

A nice day starts with a healthy breakfast, a big party is nothing without a proper buffet. What would Easter be like without huge piles of Easter eggs? And can you even imagine celebrating Christmas without cookies?

It is no wonder that food has found its way into languages all around the globe, since for millions of people, eating chocolate is worth more than dieting their way to a critically acclaimed body. Food and drinking always seem to have attracted idioms and funny sayings.

Well, of course E&M is a healthy magazine that takes care of its critically acclaimed body, too.

So as there is no international dictionary of fruit and vegetable idioms, and you are always searching for a way to impress your friends and family with international language skills whilst also encouraging healthy eating, here's a little list from E&M:

The situations seems familiar: you’re sitting around the kitchen table, arguing about nothing or getting more and more annoyed as you miss your favourite TV show. Now it’s time to unwrap your Czech skills: "Mushrooms with vinegar!" (Houby s octem!). This should be enough to demonstrate that you believe everyone is talking nonsense.

Of course you can also pretend not to understand what the discussion is even about. The advantage: it sounds good in Catalan. When you make yourself the peach (Fer-se el préssec), you act like you don’t understand anything in order to escape from a problem.

And you can even go aggressive with a very edible metaphor: if your opponent doesn’t know how to deal with an easily solvable problem, just ask them if they have tomatoes on their eyes. This German expression (Hast du Tomaten auf den Augen?) is a truly vegetarian circumlocution for the direct question "are you blind?".

Just make sure you keep an eye on your dinner-guests and remember the fate of Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly in Henry IV. She ended up complaining about Falstaff, her greedy guest: "He hath put all my substance into that fat belly of his. He hath eaten me out of house and home."

Oh how multilingual table talk can be!