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> Like the duck of Ngechur, he became industrious after growing old. The idiom is applied to a person who has more or less vegetated into maturity and old age and who, already far past his prime, suddenly tries without success to do all the things he might have done when younger. It may be used with reference to an elder who tries to be a dandy. |
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> Without looking afield, it was cut down behind the house. From the folk tale concerning Mesubed Dingal, the inventor of the Palauan kite (see also No. 73). After his wife had been kidnapped, he constructed a kite using feathers from all the birds of Palau and he needed also wood from an Edebsungel tree to fashion the body of the bird-kite. After looking all over Palau and being on the point of giving up, he found the tree he needed behind his own house. The saying may be applied to anyone who does things the hard way, or who goes far afield to find something which is close at hand. |
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> You're like a fish bait which can be eaten or pecked from the top and bottom. You don't know what to do because chores keep coming in from left and right. |
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> It's like the rat of Ngerard, which eats up all your coconuts and (then) all of ours. It's a decision, plan etc. that will backfire. A pet rat owned by Mad, chief of Ngaraard, ate the coconuts of most of the chief's neighbors, then, still hungry, ate the chief's own coconuts. |
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> I receive it and you ask for it? A man asks for and receives that which he needs from a second party. A third party, learning of this, asks the first party for it. Used as implied or generally about any unreasonable request |
