As in every language, German has a number of idioms referring to a color. But some of their literal translations can be enigmatic for English speakers. Can you guess their meaning?
Image: picture-alliance/ZUMA Wire/O. Messinger
Advertisement
8 colorful German idioms
As in every language, German has a number of idioms that use a color. Here's a smattering of such expressions that don't have a direct translation in English. Can you guess what they mean?
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Kalaene
'Paint everything gray in gray'
This list of German "color" idioms begins with the achromatic, very neutral and boring gray. When Germans say that someone is painting everything gray in gray ("alles grau in grau malen") it means that the person is being pessimistic. The word "gray" is repeated twice in the expression. Doesn't that make the pessimist in question sound rather like a realist?
Image: picture-alliance/CTK Photo/R. Jansa
'That's not the yellow of an egg'
Germans have a particular relationship with the egg and for many, the round, bright yellow, yummy yolk can't be topped as the highlight of a breakfast. So if someone says that something is "nicht das Gelbe vom Ei" (not the egg yolk), it means that it's not as perfect as it could be.
Image: Colourbox
'To be blue' / 'to make blue'
"Blau sein" (to be blue) means to be drunk. "Blaumachen" (to make blue) is to skip work or school. Urine and alcohol used to be needed to dye clothes blue. Dyers would often drink the beer themselves first instead of just pouring it into the vats. Since the dyeing process required long waiting periods, it didn't really matter if they were too hungover to actually work the day after ...
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/R. Vennenbernd
'Oh, you green nine!'
"Ach, du grüne Neune!" is an expression of surprise or annoyance, kind of like "good grief!" Its origins are unclear, but one theory relates it to the fact that instead of spades, one of the suits on German playing cards is leaves, also called "green." The equivalent card in a tarot game predicts loss, sickness or other unpleasant events.
Image: Imago/Schöning
'The red thread'
While English doesn't add a color to "a thread of ideas," a recurring theme is described as "der roter Faden" in German. The expression was used by Goethe in his novel 'Elective Affinities': "All the rope used by the Royal Fleet, from the thickest to the thinnest, is twined in such a way that a red thread runs through all of them; it is impossible to remove the thread without undoing the rope..."
Image: picture alliance/blickwinkel
'Purple: The last try'
"Lila: der letzte Versuch" is an unflattering — and thankfully outdated — expression used to describe a woman who is desperate to find a partner and wears a purple dress in an attempt to seduce someone. It used to be the hue worn by single women who were too old for the young girl's pink, but later also became a color for equal rights in Germany, with purple overalls serving as a feminist symbol.
Image: Imago/Imagebroker
'To see white mice'
The English-speaking world has established "seeing pink elephants" as the standard for a drunken hallucination caused by delirium tremens (DTs), the symptoms a person feels following withdrawal from a high intake of alcohol over a long period of time. One in three people going through DTs has visions of crawling bugs or rodents. The Germans chose white mice to describe those hallucinations.
Image: Fotolia/khmel
'To get black angry'
The expression is so idiomatic that it can now be written in a single word: "schwarzärgen." Originally referring to the discoloration of a corpse, it would be exaggerated to say that Germans only use the expression for something that makes them "angry to death." Pictured above is the German version of the Parcheesi board game, called "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" — literally, "Don't get angry, man."
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images GmbH
8 images1 | 8
Some German idioms mentioning a color have a direct translation in English, but that's obviously not always the case for every expression.
Take the color green, for example. In both cultures, it's associated with nature, spring, youth, hope and envy.
Using color expression can broaden your palette of German vocabulary!Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Kalaene
In English, someone who is skilled with plants has a green thumb. In German, they will likewise be described as having "einen grünen Daumen." And to "be green with envy" also exists in German — although yellow is also often used for the same expression, "grün (oder gelb) vor Neid."
A person who is naïve and lacks experience is "green behind the ears" — "noch grün hinter den Ohren" — and if you give a project the green light in English, you can also give the go-ahead with the same words in German: "das grüne Licht geben." Both refer to a traffic light turning green.
If you tell someone in English you'd like to 'praise them over the green clover,' they may be more than a little confusedImage: picture alliance/dpa/C. Seidel
However, an English speaker won't necessarily be able to guess the meaning of other German idiomatic references to the color green.
"Auf keinen grünen Zweig kommen" (literally: not come to any green branch) is said of someone who is not able to accomplish anything in life.
"Das ist dasselbe in Grün" (the same thing in green): a way of saying that two things are essentially the same despite apparent differences, as in "same difference."
"Über den grünen Klee loben" (praise over the green clover): It's the equivalent of "praise to the skies." The origin of the German expression is unclear, but one explanation is that cemeteries used to be covered with clover — and it's easier to glorify someone who's already dead. Or another theory is that clover was also a marker of the freshest grass in the spring, so to be portrayed as better than clover would be the utmost flattery.
Click through the gallery above for different German idioms that don't translate directly into English.
