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> You're just like a lobster (flambuoyant in color but prone to hide under rocks. You dress up fancy but never go anywhere. Applicable to a person who prides himself on great wealth but does not put it to work; or to one who dresses to the hilt, then stays home. It may once have been applied to villages that were well armed, but peaceful. |
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> You're like a floating log without a resting place. You have no fixed abode. |
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> Narrow was our birth as humans. The saying defines life as a confined, perilous journey, symbolized by the painful narrowness of the birth canal. Generally applied to the trials of life, or sometimes by a parent to a child that does not want to do his chores. |
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> Like the mud fish of the Bngei lagoon, drawn to the passing wind The reef fish mud seldom leaves a given rock or cleft in the reef, but according to this saying the mud of Bngei lagoon, near Airai, may be attracted away from their locus by the dust raised by a passing school of fish. The latter portion of this proverb is difficult to translate. The word melecheb may be applied to a person drawn forward by a current of water. Rrengor refers to a movement of air caused by one body passing another. The idiom is applied to a changeable person, a faddist, or a joiner |
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> Like the bathing of the terriid. The terriid, a bird, takes a quick splash bath, hardly a complete bathing. The idiom applies to a ducking one may get when a boat swamps, or to a wetting with spray. More generally, it is applied to a task done with haste rather than with care. It can be applied also to a brief acquaintance. |
