On the interpretation of a Hungarian idiom nyakába rántja a büdös berhét ‘pull the foul berhe up to someone’s neck’
Adalékok néhány régi szólásunk értelmezéséhez
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18349/MagyarNyelv.2023.1.76Keywords:
historical linguistics, etymology, historical lexicology, historical phraseologyAbstract
The idiom cited in the title is included in the phraseological dictionary by Gábor O. Nagy but the meanings of both the whole expression and its component berhe are given incorrectly. This paper attempts to uncover the original meaning of the idiom by presenting several 17th-century Hungarian set phrases for humiliating someone by turning one’s own argument against oneself. Nyakába rántják a büdös berhét ‘pull the foul berhe up to his neck’, multiply attested in Péter Pázmány’s works, is one such expression, the meaning of whose noun component is not ‘leather apron’ as given by Gábor O. Nagy but ‘trousers, underpants’. The idiom used to have other variants, including the heavily metaphorical nyakába fordítják a párlúgot ‘shed lye on one’s neck’, in which párlúg ‘lye’ was a liquid used in bucking clothes. Both berhe and párlúg appear in other idioms, too, including valakinek van/nincs foltos berhéje ‘have (not) a patched berhe’, toldozza-foldozza a foltos berhét ‘keep mending the patched berhe’, or öntögeti valakire a párlúgot ‘keep shedding the lye on somebody’.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Tamás Forgács
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