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Eating humble pie (sort of) and liking it...
I've undertaken a new set of assignments that have me clawing at my dead wood dictionaries for the first time in, literally, years. (And sometimes, even they are of no help.)
A while ago, I ran across yet another puzzle: a heading that read "встретили по одежке" (which I initially thought was a misprint for "встретили по одежде" because I had no idea that одежка was a word).
The literal meaning is "they were met on the basis of their <whatever одежка means>."
Multitran doesn't have an entry for it, nor does my dead wood Katzner. My dead wood Oxford says only that одежка is a diminuitive of одежда, and shows it being used in a saying, where it was rendered as "coat."
I then passed the phrase past Galina, to get the native speaker's point of view. "Aha," she says, "и провожать по уму."
I do a marvelous double take. "Huh?" I say.
"It's a saying," she says. "It means that when people first meet you, they judge you by your appearance. Afterward, when they say good-bye, they judge you by what's in your head."
I checked my dead wood dictionary of Russian idiomatic expressions and sure enough, there it was.
It ain't rocket science, but it'll probably be educational.
Cheers...
A while ago, I ran across yet another puzzle: a heading that read "встретили по одежке" (which I initially thought was a misprint for "встретили по одежде" because I had no idea that одежка was a word).
The literal meaning is "they were met on the basis of their <whatever одежка means>."
Multitran doesn't have an entry for it, nor does my dead wood Katzner. My dead wood Oxford says only that одежка is a diminuitive of одежда, and shows it being used in a saying, where it was rendered as "coat."
I then passed the phrase past Galina, to get the native speaker's point of view. "Aha," she says, "и провожать по уму."
I do a marvelous double take. "Huh?" I say.
"It's a saying," she says. "It means that when people first meet you, they judge you by your appearance. Afterward, when they say good-bye, they judge you by what's in your head."
I checked my dead wood dictionary of Russian idiomatic expressions and sure enough, there it was.
It ain't rocket science, but it'll probably be educational.
Cheers...