Occasional musings, Geistesblitze, photos, drawings etc. by a "resident alien", who has landed on American soil from a far-away planet called "Germany".

Showing posts with label soccer fouls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soccer fouls. Show all posts

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Word of the month: Unschuldslamm

UnschuldslammUnschuldslamm combines Unschuld (innocence) with Lamm (lamb). The term refers to a person claiming innocence w.r.t. some misdeed. It's typically used in sentences like "he plays (or acts) the Unschuldslamm"; i.e. there is a strong implication that the claim is false, like when someone says, "I didn't do it!".

Both the timing of and the drawing for this WoM were inspired by the current FIFA World Cup held in S. Africa, where we can watch, in match after match, players committing fouls and then acting the Unschuldslamm with precisely the gesture shown.

BTW Unschuld is formed by prefixing Schuld ("guilt") with un, which can be used to turn the meaning of a noun or adjective into its opposite--cf. English "unknown" or "undead".

[Source: Wild Things in the German Language: Kindle version | iBook version]