You see it quite often when someone will say ‘there’s a word for that…there’s no direct translation but it’s loosely like…’ then proceeds to give it a translation.
I saw one recently of kummerspeck, I think the commenter said it was ‘food you eat when you’re sad’ or ‘grief bacon’.
I would also like to preemptively apologise for my ignorance.
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There is an oft-repeated claim that Eskimos have dozens of words for “snow,” where we just have the one.
Of course it isn’t true… about English. We have snow, flurry, blizzard and if you ski, you probably know a dozen terms for packed snow on the ground.
But imagine you were referring to somebody whose language only has one word for snow. And they say “what’s a flurry” or “what’s a blizzard?” They don’t have a word for that in their language, so you can describe it… but when you say “a really light snow” or “a really heavy snow” to describe a flurry or blizzard, you feel like you truly have to experience a flurry or blizzard in order to understand it. That’s really what they mean.
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