Phrases similar to "caught red-handed" 5. Caught with the mouse in the mouth (Sardinian) 4. Caught with the ice cream trolley (Spanish) 3. Caught with the goat on your back (Greek) 2. Caught with your beard in the letterbox (Swedish) 1. You stole the cockerel, the feather is on your head (Arabic) - ThreadSky

adamcsharp.bsky.social • 460 days ago

Phrases similar to "caught red-handed"

5. Caught with the mouse in the mouth (Sardinian)
4. Caught with the ice cream trolley (Spanish)
3. Caught with the goat on your back (Greek)
2. Caught with your beard in the letterbox (Swedish)
1. You stole the cockerel, the feather is on your head (Arabic)

Comments

andyandz.bsky.social•460 days ago

Many years ago I worked for a translation agency. We whiled away many hours comparing idioms from around Europe, and you could guarantee that the Greek version would always involve a goat.

smollestbunny2.bsky.social•112 days ago

I need to know the farsi one please

rabagast.bsky.social•460 days ago

we norwegians also get our beards caught in the letterbox, but that's more the aftermath of having done something daft or being taken advantage of, not being caught in itself. when we're caught red-handed we're caught on the peach (peach is short for our word for red-handed, not really about fruit)

majka.bsky.social•112 days ago

Don’t forget «tatt med buksa nede» (caught with your pants down)

adamcsharp.bsky.social•460 days ago

I love caught on the peach! May I ask how to say that in Norwegian? I've heard beards in the letterbox used just to refer to being in a tricky situation / aftermath of doing something daft in Swedish too (as well as the red-handed usage)

rabagast.bsky.social•460 days ago

"tatt på fersken" (tatt = caught, på = on, fersken = peach, short for "fersk gjerning", which means red-handed/in the act - the direct translation would be something like "fresh action")

we've also made a verb out of it, "ferske" = to catch (slang)

bananders.bsky.social•460 days ago

Yeah, that's the meaning in Swedish too. The common expression for redhanded is having one's hand in a jar of jam.

jennyknight.bsky.social•460 days ago

Part Sardinian, so having that mouse! x

carturo222.bsky.social•460 days ago

Another example from Spanish: caught with your hands in the dough.

lenschiff.bsky.social•112 days ago

Yes, but that was out of knead.

damianaswan.bsky.social•459 days ago

Greece has a national dish whose name translates to Stolen Goat - it's basically goat slow-roasted in a covered pit (which was the recommended method for cooking a goat you'd stolen from your neighbor, so that they couldn't see or smell it).

anarchotrowerist.bsky.social•112 days ago

Caught w the meat in your mouth (new york)

mrmambo.bsky.social•460 days ago

I really like the Arabic one. There's so much more going on.

arciclaudio.bsky.social•112 days ago

6. Caught with their hands in the dough (Italian)

pooterheadpharms.bsky.social•112 days ago

There was a farmer in our area who got 'stung' by the feds in a fairly common price-rigging scheme at the old tobacco markets. Which involved quite a bit of complicity on the part of the federal graders as well. A deep, long-lived mess that got uglier and more pervasive the more they investigated.

pooterheadpharms.bsky.social•112 days ago

When asked by the now-weary chief prosecutor how he proposed to settle this knot of multi-level bribery that was now entangling all participants in embarrassing scandal, the farmer said "Simple. You let go my hand and I let go yer cheese."