The days are getting shorter, the pace quickens and the Christmas holidays are not far away.
What word to use to designate this urge to curl up in your duvet, watch the rain fall or get lost in a mountain of books?
Jean Abbiateci's Dictionary of Extraordinary
Words, illustrated by Loris Grillet, offers an anthology of words from the North that will offer you an early vacation.
To discover
Crosswords, arrow words, 7 Letters... Free to play anywhere, anytime with the Le Figaro Games app
Gluggaveður, window weather
It's dog weather.
And you know that if you go out, your socks will be soaked, your nose will drop, you will shiver and regret too quickly having wanted to play the adventurer.
This Icelandic word, to be pronounced
"glugavedour"
, therefore designates the very childish joy that there is in preferring to stay warm on a cold day.
It's a ritual in Iceland: having your coffee while watching the drops of water dancing on the glass, knowing that you'll have to get out eventually...
Read alsoThese missing words to express our emotions
Wrap yourself up, wrap yourself in the duvet
7 a.m., the alarm clock rings, and your duvet, which yesterday still seemed too rough and cold, makes you sink into the foam of its warm cotton this morning.
The temptation is great to put off getting up until later, and to grab hold of this big padded rectangle.
If you push the vice so far as to wrap yourself in it, regretting that it's always too short, you're probably swimming in the middle of
the "bewitchment" phenomenon
.
Not to be confused, warns the work of
Bulletin
,
"with the fact of changing the cover of a quilt, an action for which it would also be necessary to invent a word there"
.
Epibreren, the ultimate lazy weapon
This neologism was coined by a Dutch journalist in the 1950s to designate pretending to be active.
To say to his boss with a very preoccupied air, a worried forehead:
"I can't help you, I have to epibreren this new software"
, to resume neither seeing nor knowing your game of Solitaire on your computer...
Jólabókaflóðið, the flood of books
It is a popular tradition in Iceland.
Literary novelties are published during the end-of-year holidays, hence a deluge of books, and this linguistic contraction formed of
“Jól”
for Christmas,
“bók”
for book, and
“flóðið”
for flood.
Bulletin
's work
recalls this Icelandic proverb which is not without humour:
"In Iceland, half the population reads what the other half strives to write"
.
Fjaka, the “almost siesta”
The terms
"lethargy"
and
"drowsiness"
are never precise enough to designate this heaviness of the senses that follows a hearty and well-watered meal.
This languor often plays tricks on us, but it is - let's face it - so delicious that we almost feel like finishing the coffee that will wake us up (or not).
The Croatian fjaka is the equivalent of the Polynesian
“I am fiu”
: far from describing a state of laziness, it translates an idea of nonchalance that it is not even useful to try to combat.
