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> Bitter and salty. The strategy of "doing things the hard way." When alternatives are available, the appropriate choice is the more difficult one. In voice, expression, and action there is a positive accent on personal ability. |
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> Like an old woman who is cautious about coughing and breaking wind. Among elderly women, it seems, coughing sometimes produces the unwanted effect of breaking wind. The idiom may be applied to any action that might produce an undesirable side effect, such as a hasty decision at a political meeting. As a caution, it suggests the need for leaders to consider all the consequences. |
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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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> When the purple swamp hen appears, it brings remembrance There is a song (Oumachas) from which this saying derives: Once there was a young couple who made love in a secluded spot in the taro garden. While they were lying together a purple swamp hen darted out of the brush startling the couple. Eventually love cooled, but thereafter whenever the girl saw a purple swamp hen while she worked in the gardens, she recalled her lover. Hence any occurrence that brings back fond memories. |
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> Like Ngiramesemong, rehashing what has been finished. Pertains to a person who repeatedly reminds another of past favors or continually recalls the mistakes of others. (My sources no longer recalled the episode or story from which this idiom derives.) |
