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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I don’t know the routes of this Yiddish/German word and so I don’t know if this is a simple anglicization or an eggcorn. Verklempt, as in temporarily overcome with emotion, was popularized in a Saturday Night Live skit. Web dictionaries give a range of orthographies for the original: faklempt, ferklempt, faclempt, farklempt, verklempt, and verklemmt.
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I felt my knees getting a little weak. I admit, I became a little verclamped as the emotions of the moment culminated.
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I can just remember when I first saw my 350z… excuse me, I’m getting a little verclamped!
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Your sweet! :hug: Thanks… Now I’m all furclamped!!! :tears:
Last edited by David Bird (2010-08-24 08:11:57)
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This post reminds me of a German-derived expression I once heard … but can’t seem to reproduce properly. It goes something like so-and-so is “verruckt in the head” (though it’s much more fun to spell it “verooked” which conjures up the word “rooked.”) Can anyone set me straight on this word’s spelling and whether the usage makes any sense? (Maybe it really was verkelmpt … and it was never uttered properly in the first place.)
Last edited by jorkel (2010-08-24 00:56:31)
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Indeed, verrückt is a common German adjective for “crazy.” I suspect it shares an ancient root with our English “ruck,” the old word for a wrinkle, a displacement, a ridge.
German, like most (all?) languages, has numerous ways of expressing literal or figurative madness. An expressions that has always tickled me is “er hat einen Vogel,” spoken with appropriate circular motions of the finger in the region of the cranium. “He has a bird (in the head).”
Some friends of mine are Czech mycologists. I emailed them a picture of a mushroom with a tentative ID. One of them wrote back and told me that the other person, the expert in this species, said something in Czech that translated to “you have fallen off the strawberry.” Apparently this is a Czech way of saying that someone is not playing with a full deck. I accept the appellation: The botanical strawberries from which I have stumbled would make many gallons of jam.
Last edited by kem (2010-08-24 11:35:22)
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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