{"id":6360,"date":"2011-12-09T12:01:20","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T12:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=6360"},"modified":"2011-12-09T12:01:20","modified_gmt":"2011-12-09T12:01:20","slug":"dros-ben-llestri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=6360","title":{"rendered":"Dros ben llestri"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Welsh idiom, dros ben llestri<\/strong> (literally, “over (the) dishes\/crockery”), means ‘over the top’, as in excessive, exaggerated or beyond reasonable limits. The phrase dros ben<\/strong> on its own means “residual, spare; extra, extremely, indeed, over”. I’m not sure how this phrase came to be associated with exaggeration.<\/p>\n

In French there are a number of ways to express the same concept:
\n– (\u00eatre) exag\u00e9r\u00e9 \/ trop \/ d\u00e9lirant(e) = (to be) over the top (excessive)
\n– encenser = to go over the top (praise excessively)
\n– en faire trop \/ en faire des tonnes \/ aller trop loin \/ d\u00e9passer les bornes = to go over the top (do sth excessively) <\/p>\n

encenser<\/strong> also means ‘to praise by burning incense (l’encens)’.<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples of usage:<\/p>\n

– Votre r\u00e9action est exag\u00e9r\u00e9e = Their reaction was well over the top
\n = Mi aeth eu ymateb dros ben llestri<\/p>\n

– L’Eurovision, c’est vraiment trop ! = Eurovision is so fantastically over the top
\n = Mae Eurovision yn hollol dros ben llestri<\/p>\n

– Cette fois, il d\u00e9passe vraiment les bornes ! = This time he’s really gone too far \/ over the top!
\n = Y tro ‘ma, mae o ‘di mynd dros ben llestri yn wir.<\/p>\n

The English expression over the top<\/strong> first appeared in print in 1965, and the acronym OTT<\/strong> made its first appearance in 1982 in the Official Sloane Ranger Handbook<\/em>, according to the OED.<\/p>\n

Sources: WordReference.com<\/a>, OED<\/a><\/p>\n

How do you express the same idea in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Welsh idiom, dros ben llestri (literally, “over (the) dishes\/crockery”), means ‘over the top’, as in excessive, exaggerated or beyond reasonable limits. The phrase dros ben on its own means “residual, spare; extra, extremely, indeed, over”. I’m not sure how this phrase came to be associated with exaggeration. In French there are a number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,125,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-idioms","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}