Untranslatable
  • Words
  • Submit
  • About
  • Words
  • Submit
  • About

untranslatable

tikotara

14/5/2017

 
​[tikotaɹa]

(of a man)
Carry a lover to several locations inside a house (to demonstrate physical strength) before having sex.


Takuu – 1,800 speakers – Taku Atoll near Bougainville, Papua New Guinea

Piers Kelly came across this word while editing the Takuu dictionary. Richard Moyle explains that its cognates in several parts of Polynesia refer to the kingfisher bird. The kingfisher is not known on Taku Atoll, although it may have been present in the past. Even that meaning has a hidden story because the word is a compound noun: tiko 'shit', tara 'curved end of a house'.

Moyle writes: "How the term became transferred to a form of athletic foreplay remains unclear, and my dictionary collaborators were less than forthcoming."

Source: Richard M. Moyle (2011). Takuu Grammar and Dictionary. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics
​

Credit: Piers Kelly, Richard M. Moyle

Comments are closed.

    Untranslatable

    Exotic words from the world's treasure languages.

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Aikuma Project​
Copyright © 2019