How to make yourself understood in an emergency
When you are IN the situation where you really, really need to relieve
yourself through your uppermost intestinal opening, knowing how to
express your need is crucial. It is recommended that you read and
learn the following words by heart, so that next time you need them
they'll be able to leave your mouth before anything else does.
I have tried grading the words from the acceptable language you can
use for emptying your stomach on the business class of any
trans-Atlantic flight to the more rudish language you would use when
travelling drunk with a minor bus company.
- "Excuse me, miss flight-attendant. Would you be able to help me with a
device for regurgitating, somewhere in the immediate future?"
- "Oh dear, I seem to be a little bit nauseated. Uhm... Quite a bit,
actually."
- "Would you be terribly offended if I ejected?"
- "I think I'll just go back in the plane and launch."
- "My body is ready for some serious emitting rather soon now."
- "Anyone want to join me for some spouting?"
- "Could you just turn around, I will disgorge now."
- "You don't mind me choking, gagging and retching while you eat,
do you?"
- "Ten.. nine.. eight.. seven.. Sick! *throw up*"
- "This seems to be an exceptionally good occasion for hurling!"
- "I think I'm going to be sick."
- "StopthebusI'mabouttovomit."
- "GOTTA PUKE! *barfbarfbarf*"
- "HNNNNGHHH! *spew*"
I would very much like it if people around the world could
provide me with further matching
expressions from their languages. If you can add to my collection,
through GIFs or preferrably by snailmailing me
more packages for
puking (unused, PLEASE!), that would give you a very special place in
my heart.
Norwegian section:
Sickness bag = Spypose
To explain what happens politely = Å rope på elgen
To feel sick = Å være kvalm
To empty the chest = Å tømme brøstet
English, tasteless section:
Blowing chowder(/chunks)
Hork
Ralph
Playing the whale
Praying to the porcelain gods
Fertilizing the porcelain
Tossing your cookies
Rerun brunch
Shooting gut rockets
Technicolor Yawn
File the bile
The liquid laugh
Shouting "EUROPE" at the sink
"I'm about to...
- blow chunks in technicolor.
- spew forth with great purpose.
- create a new addition to the Great Lakes - only cleaner.
- add some frogmen to the porcelain ocean.
- sing the spews.
- visit cousin Rolf at the lake of aque blue water."
Talking with Ralph on the Big White Phone.
Hey, when you lose breakfast while engaging in ice sports, is that a
curl hurl?
And then there's of course the nice touch some of the cars carry:
- "FORD!" - Like, when something goes up your throat mighty fast...
- "BU-ICK!" - Kinda similar to the P-word.
- "HYUNDAI!" - Sounds familiar, eh?
And here is
hURL which is the most impressive collection of Vommy-Vords I have
seen this far. Keep mailing me new words in other languages, though!
Australian
To/a "chunder" (both noun and verb). This supposedly comes from
seasickness suffered by early migrants on the ships bringing them to
Australia. When about to vomit from the upper decks they would cry
"Watch under!" before letting go. This soon became shortened to the
word used today.
Brazilian Portuguese
- To vomit = "Vomitar", and then you bend it around some grammatical
rules.
- Botar pra fora = Something like "putting it outside.
- Regurgitar = Puking, but mainly when babies do it.
- Passar mal = To feel not very well
- Ver de novo o Jantar = To see your meal for the second time
Chinese:
Vomiting = "Tu", said in a rapid downward change in pitch. (Sort of illustrative.)
Danish:
Pretty much anything spoken in Danish sounds like some kind of puking,
but the following are the technical slang terms for it anyway:
To speak in the big, white telephone = At tale i den store, hvide
telefon.
To speak to Ulrik = At snakke med Ulrik (which is a fairly common
Danish name, which sounds ESPECIALLY hurly when it's pronounced by a
Dane)
To throw a cake = At kaste en kage.
Dutch:
To puke = kotsen, braken, overgeven, spuien
Je eten twee keer zien = To see your food twice
Ik denk dat ik moet kotsen = I'm really feeling sick now
Finnish:
To vomit :
- ajaa bussia (to drive a bus, most often used when hurling into a
toilet, and the person performing is holding the toilet seat as if
it was a steering wheel.)
- antaa ylen (Politically correct)
- laatata/laatoittaa/heittää laattaa.
- oksenta (The dictionary says this)
- puhua norjaa (Literally "to speak Norwegian". Supposedly the
Norwegian language spoken sounds like people hurling to Finnish
people. Go figure!)
- puklata (Slang, slightly inspired by English, maybe)
- yrjötä
- ykettää (A bit more childish)
Vomit (noun) :
- oksennus (Used in the dictionary)
- laatta (Also means "slab", a sort of tile. Laatoitta (look
above) means "to place slabs", probably because sometimes you
are on your knees/crawling, as if you were putting down
slabs. Also, bathroom floors often are made of this kind of
tiles.
- yrjö, (Yrjö is a boy name and roughly translates to George)
- yketys
French:
Mal-de-mer = Puking as a consequence of travelling, originally by
boat, but it is used for hurling on a plane or a bus as well.
Cuvette buhlasteeers = Toiletseat blasters.
Appeler Ralph dans le grand telephone blanc. = To call Ralph in the
big white phone.
Gerber = To puke
Vomir = To puke
Poser un renard = To lay down a fox
J'ai les dents du fond qui baignent = The teeth in the back of my
mouth are soaking wet
Hebrew
To vomit = Lehakiy
Korean:
Tohada = Vomit
Misik Misik Hada = I feel like vomiting. Notice that "Misik" is pretty
closely related to "Me sick!" linguistically.
Olida = To vomit (literally: Move upwards)
The Koreans have a lot of medical tricks. Here's Korea's best kept
secret: Put a piece of anti muscle-pain pad on your belly. It will
keep travel sickness away in any conditions up to, but not including,
typhoons at sea. Another traditional way to keep that hurling feeling
away is to massage down your left arm towards the fingers, and then
tie the first knuckle of the thumb so that blood is trapped within
it. Then use a need to puncture your thumb at the knuckle (a very
small hole is needed), so that you can see a dark drop of blood. It
works great for both air and sea sickness as well as against severe
indigestion. I have no idea whatsoever who came up with this stuff in
the first place.
Swedish:
Tala i den stora vita telefonen = Talk into the big, white phone.
Ringa hem = Call home
Köra hem = Go home
Kräkas = To vomit
Att tilbe porslinsguden = To worship the porcelain god
Lägga maräng = Make some uhm... food
Lägga pizza = To make pizza
Köra buss = To drive the bus
Contributors to the list and the collection:
- Aashild Hage Ebbing, Athens TX / Vinstra, Norway
- Aina Småvik, Fiin-Trondheim, Norway
- Alex Tromp, Apeldoorn, the Netherlands
- Asle Kristiansen, Oslo, Norway
- Bengt Alverborg, Swede fiddling with phones in Dallas, Texas
- Brenda Finster, Newbury Park, California, USA
- Daniel Salber, France.
- Fred McKinney, Missouri, USA
- Geir Sørensen, Trondheim, Norway
- Gjertrud Pedersen, Tromsø, Norway
- Jacques Bouchard, Canada
- Janus Helmin Welling, Denmark (.dk [decay])
- Jay Goldberg, Texas
- Jennifer Yuan, Minnesota, USA
- Jens G. Balchen, Saint Etienne, Norway
- Jere Knuuttila, Otaniemi, Finland
- Jonas Claeson, Stockholm, Sweden
- Jonas Wallgren, Linkøping, Sweden
- Leonard Migliore, Mountain View, California
- Maria Almeida, Brazil
- Martin H. Booda, at the Mississippi Gulf Coast, USA
- Niall Doherty, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Peter Warren, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Ron Ames, probably in Kansas
- Rune Lillesveen, Trondheim, Norway
- Shinobu Yoshino, Urayasu city, Chiba, Japan
- Stijn Deventer, Belgium
- Tonya Whelan, Seattle, USA
- Woongkil Jang, Pusan, South Korea
bct@pvv.unit.no
Last modified: Tue Jul 5 10:49:07 CEST 2005