Seid gegrüßt, delightful and dedicated listerns, and welcome to another round of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Once again we are headed to the land of bratwurst and hamburgers, as we examine today’s rather pointed word: backpfeifengesicht.

Backpfeifengesicht is a word meaning ‘a face badly in need of a fist’, or ‘a face that is slappable’. Pretty self explanatory, I should think. It is from the German ‘backpfeife’ meaning ‘slap in the face’ and ‘geischt’ meaning ‘face’; therefore ‘slap in the face-face’. Could we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that the Germans have an entire word for ‘slap in the face’? Priorities, am I right? In fact, the German punk bank, Die Ärzte, named one of their songs ‘Backpfeifengesicht’ since the lyrics mention a person who apparently has a stupid look on their face that frustrates the singer.

‘Backpfeife’ in particular is made up of ‘Backe’ which means ‘cheek’ and ‘pfeifen’ which means ‘to whistle’, so literally ‘cheek whistle’, referring to the sound that is made when someone is slapped on the cheek.

Similarly, the word ‘ohrfeige’ means ‘box on the ear or cuff on the ear’, or a figurative ‘slap in the face’, where ‘ohr’ means ‘ear’ and ‘feige’ means ‘fig’. The two are related, as ‘pfeife’ normally means ‘pipe’ or ‘flute’, but in this case it comes from ‘Ohrfeige’ - ‘ear fig’, which is close to the ear, which in turn relates to slap on the face. Are you with me still, joyous listener?

If we shift countries for a moment, the phrase ‘tête à claques’ is French for ‘pain in the neck’ or ‘blighter’, and can also be described as ‘someone so annoying that they might deserve to be slapped’. It’s also a French-language humour website created in 2006, if that happens to be your thing.

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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