Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know, or can you guess, the language?
Chocolate Teapots
When something is useless you might say it’s as useful as a chocolate teapot or something similar.
Apparently it first appeared in print in an article entitled Shades of Bunker Hill! by Don berry in the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York, USA).
Other ways to say that something is useless include:
- as much use as a chocolate teapot
- (to) have a reliability record like a chocolate kettle
- as much use as a chocolate fireguard
- as much use as a chocolate fireplace
- as much use as a handbrake on a canoe
- as much use as a screen door on a submarine
- as much use as a cat flap on a submarine
- as much use as a waterproof towel
- as much use as a dry day in the desert
- as much use as a glass hammer
- as useful as a paper boat
- as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike
- as useful as tits on a bull
- as useful as a politician’s promise
- as useful as a lead balloon
By the way, I made up a few of the sayings above. Can you guess which ones?
Equivalent phrases in other languages include:
- Polish: potrzebny jak dziura w moście = needed like a hole in a bridge
- Scottish Gaelic: cho feumail ri pàillean am fàsach = as useful as a palace in a wilderness
- Vietnamese: cơn bão trong tách trà = a storm in a teacup
Do you know any others?
Incidentally, according to BBC News, chocolate teapots might not be as usesful as they are reputed to be.
Sources: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/useful_as_a_chocolate_teapot
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/useful_as_a_chocolate_teapot
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/104958/origin-of-as-useful-as-a-chocolate-teapot-fireguard
https://www.powerthesaurus.org/as_much_use_as_a_chocolate_teapot/synonyms
Language Quiz
Yexing
Have you yexed recently? If you have, what did you do to stop your yexes?
The word yex [jɛks] sounds like a made-up word you might find in a children’s book or linguistic experiment – the wug is yexing, yesterday it yex__. However, it is, in fact, a genuine English word, though archaic. As a noun, it means a hiccough / hiccup, belch or burp, and as a verb, it means to hiccough, belch or burp [source].
The verb to yex comes from Middle English yexen [ˈjɛksən] (to hiccough, belch, yawn, gulp, swallow convulsively, gasp, sob) from Old English ġiscian [ˈjis.ki.ɑn] (to sigh, sob), from Proto-West Germanic *giskōn (to gasp, yawn, gulp), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵeys- (gaping, cracked) [source].
The noun yex comes from Middle English yexe / ȝ(e)oxe (the condition of having the hiccoughs), from Old English ġeocsa [ˈjes.kɑ] (sobbing, hiccough), which comes from the same roots as the verb [source].
Words from the same roots include ye(e)sk (a hiccough, belch, the hiccoughs) and to yesk (to hiccough, belch, vomit) in Scots [source], and yux (to sob, weep loudly) in Yola [source].
Language Quiz
Bread Vans
What would you carry in a bread cart? It could be bread, but doesn’t have to be. Let’s find out more.
One word that came up in my Chinese lessons this week was 面包车 [麵包車] (miànbāochē) which can be literally translated as ‘bread vehicle / cart’. According to the MDBG Chinese dictionary, it means a van for carrying people or a taxi minibus. According to Wiktionary, it means a vehicle for delivering bread, or a minibus or van (chiefly in Mainland China).
Other words for van in Chinese include:
- 货车 [貨車] (huòchē) = truck, van, freight train, goods train, goods wagon
- 厢式车 [廂式車] (xiāngshìchē) = van
- 小型货车 [小型貨車] (xiǎoxínghuòchē) = light van
- 廂型車 [厢型车] (xiāngxíngchē) = minivan, van (used in Taiwan)
In Japanese, 貨車 (kasha) is also used, and means a freight train, a train car used to carry freight, or a van [source].
Incidentally, the word van can refer to: a covered motor vehicle used to carry goods or (normally less than 10) persons, usually roughly cuboid in shape. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and longer and higher than a car but relatively smaller than a truck/lorry or a bus [source].
It’s short for caravan, which comes from Middle French caravane (caravan – a group of travellers, merchants, and pilgrims, gathered together to cross the desert more safely), from Old French carvane, from Persian کاروان (kârvân – caravan, convoy), from Middle Persian kʾlwʾn’ (kārawān), from Old Persian 𐎣𐎠𐎼 (k-a-r – the people, subjects, army), from Proto-Iranian *kā́rah (army, crowd), from Proto-Indo-European *kór-o-s, from *ker- (army) [source].
The word vanguard (The leading units at the front of an army or fleet; The person(s) at the forefront of any group or movement) is not related. Instead, it comes from vandgard / (a)vantgard, from Old French avant-garde (the vanguard of an army or other force). This is also the root of the word avant-garde, which in English can refer to any group of people who invent or promote new techniques or concepts, especially in the arts. While in French, it can refer to the vanguard (of an army), or the avant-garde as in English [source].
guard’s van
A vanguard should not be confused with a guard’s van, which in the UK and Ireland can refer to a van or carriage, or part of one, on a train occupied by the guard, that can be used as storage space for parcels, bicycles, large pieces of luggage, etc. Such things are rarely found on modern passenger trains in the UK, though there may be a small cubbyhole for the train manager (formerly known as the guard), and/or storage space for bicycles on some trains [source].
By the way, the day this post was posted, 26th March 2026, marks exactly 20 years since I started this blog on 26th March 2006. Since then, I have posted 3,963 posts here, 3.8 per week on average, and plan to continue doing so. I realised this after posting this, and thought I’d mention it.
Language Quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know, or can you guess, the language?
By the way, this is a short recording, and the only one I could find for this language.
Mouchard
One of the words that came up last night in the French conversation group was mouchard, which means an informant and various other things. I thought I’d look into it in more detail here.
Mouchard [mu.ʃaʁ] can mean:
- a snitch, grass or tell-tale (police informant) – also known as indic, cafteur or cafard in French
- a bug (hidden microphone)
- a spyhole or peephole
- a tachograph (device that records the distance and time traveled by a vehicle)
- (a piece of) spyware
- a spyplane
- a black box, flight recorder
It comes from mouche (a fly, bullseye, historically: a spy employed by the ancien régime to seek out subversive ideas) and -ard (pejorative suffix), from Middle French mousche (a fly), from Old French m(o)usche (a fly) [source], from Latin musca (a fly, an inquisitive or prying person) , from Proto-Indo-European *mu(s)/*mews- (fly). Words from the same roots include midge in English and Mücke (midge, gnat, crane fly, mosquito) in German [source].
Related words include:
- mouchardage = informing, grassing, ratting
- moucharder = to rat (on), to tell tales
The French word mouchard has also been borrowed into English, and means an undercover investigator or a police spy, especially in a French-speaking country, or an inverted compass hanging above the captain’s bed. The activity of such people is known mouchardism [source].
Other fly-related expressions in French include:
- faire mouche = to hit the bullseye, to come off, to hit home, to hit the nail on the head
- mouche de coche = back-seat driver (person who pretends to be useful by offering unsolicited advice or by running around without actually doing any work)
- pattes de mouche = scrawl, chicken scratch (illegible handwriting)
- prendre la mouche = to get offended, to get in a huff, to fly off the handle [source]
Are there interesting equivalents of mouchard in other languages?
Language Quiz
Pouring Rain
Yesterday it rained quite a lot here in the UK, and rather heavily at times. This got me thinking about the saying it never rains but it pours.
This expression means unfortunate events occur in quantity or misfortunes never come singly. A related saying is bad things come in threes. Fortunately this wasn’t the case for me yesterday, apart from a few minor delays and disruptions on the trains I took [source].
It never rains but it pours can apparently also refer to good things happening all at once or to excess, though I suspect the negative meaning is more common. It first appears in It Cannot Rain But It pours, an article by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope in Prose Miscellanies, and in It cannot Rain but it Pours OR, London ſrowʼd [strowed] with Rarities, a book by John Arbuthnot published in 1726 [source].
There are similar expressions in other languages, including some that refer to rain:
- 屋漏偏逢连夜雨 [屋漏偏逢連夜雨] (wū lòu piān féng liányè yǔ) = (if your) house leaks, it tends to rain all night long (Mandarin Chinese)
- Nuair a thig cith tig balc = when the rain comes, a downpour comes (Irish)
- Piove sul bagnato = it rains on the wet (Italian)
- 降れば土砂降り (fureba doshaburi) = if it rains, it will be a downpour (Japanese)
- Cuando llueve, diluvia = when it rains, it pours (Spanish)
- När det regnar så öser det ner = when it rains, it pours down (Swedish)
In some languages such sayings mean something like ‘misfortunes do not come alone’ or ‘a misfortune seldom comes alone’:
- En ulykke kommer sjældent alene = a misfortune seldom comes alone (Danish)
- Un malheur ne vient jamais seul = a misfortune never comes alone (French)
- Bėda viena nevaikšto = trouble does not come alone (Lithuanian)
- Nieszczęścia chodzą parami = misfortunes walk in pairs (Polish)
- Helynt ni ddaw ei hunan = trouble does not come by itself (Welsh)
- Hakuna msiba usiokuwa na mwenziwe = there is no tragedy without a companion (Swahili)
Here a few other examples that don’t mention rain or misfortune:
- Ar ein skriðan er lopin er onnur væntandi = when one landslide is over, another is waiting (Faroese)
- Sjaldan er ein báran stök = rarely is a single bear alone (Icelandic)
- Nuair a thig air duine, thig air uile = when it befalls one, it befalls all (Scottish Gaelic)