k'onih'azi

[k'onihʔazi]

A newly wed beaver couple, that is, a male beaver and a female beaver who have recently formed a union and built a lodge together.

Carrier/Dakelh – 600 speakers – central British Columbia, Canada

The Carrier region is full of streams and woods suitable for beaver, and beaver are plentiful. European contact was motivated largely by the desire for the pelts of beaver and other fur-bearing animals. Traditionally, Carrier people hunted beaver primarily for the meat, especially the tail, which is rich and fatty, which may be off-putting to non-locals but is appealing to people accustomed to a cold, northern climate. Carrier people know a great deal about beavers and have an elaborate terminology for them. More about Carrier.

Source: field notes from work with the late Harry Pierre

Credit: Bill Poser

tikotara

​[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

panuku

[pʰanukʰu]

1. For a girl to push her partner at arm's length in dancing;
​2. Be hesitant to do something mainly due to rules of propriety.

Visayan – 16 million speakers – central and southern Philippines

The prestige dialect 'Cebuano-Visayan' is spoken only on the island of Cebu. However the label 'Cebuano' is often used to refer to the totality of Visayan dialects.

Source: Wolff, John U (1972). A Dictionary of Cebuano Visayan. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University.

Credit: Piers Kelly

kwadi

[kwadi]

The laziness one feels after warming oneself in the sun on cold days.

Hunsrik – 3,000,000 speakers – Brazil (mainly Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul)

The Hunsrik word kwadi derives from Portuguese quati, which comes from Tupi akwa'tim, meaning "long nose". In Portuguese, the word refers to animals of the genera Nasua and Nasuella, which like to warm themselves for a long time in the sun.

Source: Dicionário do hunsriqueano (unpublished)

Credit: Adriano Steffler

burrmarlarla

[buɾmaɭaɭa]

The moving shimmer of half light and half shade on the light coloured fur of antilopine kangaroos (Macropus antilopinus) that lie down under trees in the heat of the day such that they look as if they have been smearing themselves with white clay and they shine in the light from a distance.

Kunwok – 2,000 speakers – Australia (Arnhem Land)

Kunwok is a complex of six language varieties spoken in West Arnhem in the `Top End' of Australia. The word burrmarlarla comes from the morrdjdjanjno hunting song genre of the Kundedjnjenghmi dialect.

Source: Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek

Credit: Murray Garde
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buwalitundiras

[buwalitundiras]

Useless word.

Eskayan – 550 speakers – Bohol, Philippines

The Visayan gloss given by Peligro is pulung nga walay hinungdan, `word that has no reason or use'.

Eskayan is an auxiliary language that was mostly created through a relexification of Visayan. It is attributed to an ancestor by the name of Pinay but cannot be positively traced prior to the 1920s. The word buwalitundiras does not have a straightforward Visayan gloss and its meaning may point to the circumstances in which the language was created (interactions in which words are innovated and some rejected). It is partly analysable since tundiras is Eskayan for `word', although buwali- appears to be a `cranberry morpheme' with no independent meaning, perhaps itself a buwalitundiras?

Source: Wordlist compiled by Sisinia Datahan Peligro

Credit: Piers Kelly and Sisinia Datahan Peligro

mamihlapinatapai

[maˈmihləˈpinataːˈpai]

​A look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin.

Yahgan – 1? – Chile and Argentina (Tierra del Fuego)

Actually the gloss popularized is just one possible meaning. The form is analyzed as ma(m)- reciprocal, iləpi 'be ambivalent', -ən-at- 'get into a state', -aːpai dual.

The dictionary compiler (the Rev. Thomas Bridges, who was fluent in Yahgan) often simply put down possible usages as glosses, which later readers misinterpret as fixed definitions. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamihlapinatapai

Source: Yamana-English Dictionary (https://archive.org/details/YAMANA-ENGLISHA )

Credit: Jess Tauber

vakasteglok

[vakastɛɰ'lɔk]

Take care of your own parents, in recognition of all the care they've given you in your younger years.

Mwotlap – 2,100 speakers – Vanuatu (Motalava Island, Banks Group)

The verb vakasteg alone means ‘take care of a weak person: a child, a person who is sick, disabled or elderly…’
By adding the suffix -lok ‘back, in return’, we get the meaning ‘take care of a weak person in return (for what they did for us in the past)’. 

This is an important concept in Mwotlap culture: we should give back our respect and care to those who helped us when we needed it. This is how a society can hold together from generation to generation.

Source: François, Alexandre (2017). A Mwotlap-French-English Dictionary. Electronic files. Paris, LACITO-CNRS. (http://tiny.cc/Mtp-E-F-dict)

Credit: Alex François

kaaruwa

[káárùwə̀]

A divorced or widowed woman who has remained independent despite still being of marriageable age.

Hausa – 40+ million speakers – Nigeria, Niger, and neighbouring countries.

This word is often translated as "free woman", "femme libre" or as "prostitute", "harlot" (Google Translate, R.C. Abraham, Dictionary of the Hausa Language.) These translations are either too vague, or too specific and derogatory.

Source: orthography: Roxana Ma Newman, A Hausa-English Dictionary. Yale University Press. 1990. IPA transcription and translation: personal field notes; transcription verified using Schuh & Yalwa "Hausa" in Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Credit: Will Leben

caal

[càːl]

be reflected in, e.g. `Abac is reflected in her daughter'.
​
Shilluk – 175,000 speakers – Sudan and South Sudan

This verb is similar to English resemble, except the way we interpret subject and object is reversed: the subject is the source of the resemblance, not the reflection.

This can be seen from the following example, where Abac is the subject.

ábác     ɲāaar-ɛ̄           á-càaal-ɛ̀
Abac    daughter-3S    PAST-be.reflected-3SG
'Abac is reflected in her daughter.'

As Fillmore (1977:74) said "Languages, and lexical items, differ in interesting ways in the options they present in taking particular perspectives on complex scenes."

Credit: Bert Remijsen and Otto Gwado Ayoker (field notes)

naȟléčA

[nɑˈxletʃɑ]

Tear something open with the foot.

Lakhota – 6,000 speakers – USA (North and South Dakota)

Lakota verbs have obligatory prefixes that specify the body part or motion that is responsible for the action.
​
Source: Rising Voices (0:20:45), Robert Rankin. 2005. Quapaw. In Native languages of the Southeastern United States, 454-498. University of Nebraska Press.
​
​Credit: Steven Bird, David Rood

šiˑšaˑwiɬtaqyo

[ʃiːʃaːwiɬtaqjo]

Powered by a monstrous supernatural porcupine-like creature.

Nuu-chah-nulth, Nootka – 130 speakers, Canada (Vancouver Island)

This word is made from two parts:
šiˑšaˑwiˑɬ: supernatural porcupine-like creature.
-taqyo: powered by, having shamanistic power derived from.

Source: Nootka texts; tales and ethnological narratives (Edward Sapir and Morris Swadesh, 1978) pages 253, 283, 329 (https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001009910)
Credit: Anthony Woodbury

makittaqanngitsoq

[makitːaqaŋːitsoq]

Someone who hasn't mastered the art of rolling over in a kayak.

​Greenlandic, Kalaallisut – 57,000 speakers, Greenland, USA (Alaska), Canada

A common feature of ‘untranslatable’ words is translations which add contextual information. For example, the above definition mentions kayak, mastery, and rolling. However, these concepts are only implied. Consider the breakdown of the word:

makittaq -a           -nngit -soq
makittaq -qar        -nngit -toq        -0
rising      -have      -not    -intrans  -absolutive.singular
be unable to get upright

Linguists call this complex word structure ‘polysynthesis’.

​Source: Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1:04:58). 
Credit: Steven Bird, Anthony Woodbury