English is the richest language by far. We have more words than any other, a result perhaps of a thousand years of blending and borrowing and importing words from all over. But there are some ideas and expressions we don’t have in our language, and I’ve always been interested in what we’re missing. For instance, didis is an Indonesian word that means to search and pick up lice from one’s own hair, usually when in bed at night. Actually, I’m rather glad I’ve never needed a word for that.
Amaeru is a Japanese word that means to seek affection through doing things like clinging or pleading, which describes every middle school romance that ever was.
Fingerspitzengefuhl is a German word that means “finger tips feeling,” an intuitive feel or to have one’s finger on the pulse, even though it sounds like it could be the name of a fancy pastry. Or a kinky sexual practice. Or both. (It’s German, after all.)
Cafune is a Portuguese word that means tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair, presumably when they’re not busy with their didis.
All of these words came from a great website called eunoia.com that has a whole treasure box of words that don’t really translate. What it doesn’t tell you, and what I guess we can never know, is how these words were invented.
I suppose at some point in Japan, someone was causing a romantic scene and begging and pleading and putting on an embarrassing spectacle, and someone watching it all unfold asked, “Do you think this is going to work? Do you think this is attractive behavior? All of this… amaeru?”
Or maybe, however many centuries ago, some Indonesian parent heard noises from their teenage child’s room after bedtime and asked, “What are you doing in there?” And the answer was a curt, surly teenage answer: “Didis, OK? Am I allowed to do that or is this Nazi Germany?”
In Portugal, that same scene might have gone a different way. “What are you doing in there? It had better not be cafune!”
These are all great words. And what’s more, they’re fun to use. (Except perhaps for fingerspitzengefuhl, which should only be spoken when masked or under social-distancing conditions.) But English is no slouch in the word-coining Olympics. It’s the most-spoken language on Earth when you consider both native speakers and nonnative speakers. Such a globally distributed, diverse language group is going to keep inventing words to address a kaleidoscope of new situations.
For example, in the wake of Hurricane Ian, thousands of telephone and power line repairmen headed to Florida to help get crucial services up and running for storm victims. They’re called linemen, and as anyone familiar with Glen Campbell’s 1968 hit “Wichita Lineman“ can tell you, it’s a lonely and (sometimes) romantic job.
A few days after the brigades of out-of-state linemen arrived in Florida, single women in the area were posting TikTok videos with snapshots of “hot linemen” on the job. Some even posted screenshots of lineman profiles from dating sites. There were enough of these posts to give rise to a new subcategory on the app: “Lineman TikTok.”
Inevitably, of course, some of those photos and screenshots were seen by people who knew the lineman from back home. Some, unhappily, were even married to a few of those linemen.
Lineman TikTok exploded with angry recriminations. The wives of the linemen posted tough-talking threats — no amaeru here, that’s for sure — and the local Florida women responded with taunts and trash talk. And in that cauldron of jealousy and possessive bitterness, a new compound noun was born: bucket bunny.
“Listen up ladies,” the wife of a lineman posted to her TikTok page, pronouncing the word “ladies” as if she meant its opposite. “When he’s done fixing your power lines, my man is coming home. To me. Ya hear? To me. I am not worried about any of y’all bucket bunnies.”
I’m ashamed that I had to look this up: The trucks that linemen drive have telescoping arms that can carry them to the top of the utility pole in a plastic man-sized bucket. They’re called bucket trucks, so it’s only logical that a woman chasing a guy in a bucket truck would be called a bucket bunny.
Words, I guess, appear when and where they’re needed. And that’s one of the reasons I keep scrolling through TikTok on a daily basis. It’s important to keep up my fingerspitzengefuhl.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
