In Germany, they're called "currant-crappers" and in Spain "chick-pea counters". This week, Tower of Babel takes issues with nitpickers of all nations. A person who is overly fastidious - and has to broadcast it aloud to boot - is occasionally referred to in German as a Korinthenkacker - i.e. "currant crapper". No offence to the Greek townsfolk of Corinth, needless to say. That's where currants, tiny-type raisins, come from. Korinthenkacker are so punctilious even their droppings come in raisin-size portions. The French denote such a fussy customer in similarly vulgar terms as an enculeur de mouches (fly-fucker), for whom currants give way to flies. No lesser luminary than the novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline is said to have given this expression currency. Never, in The Netherlands, call someone a Mierenneuker, suggesting he has intercourse with ants could be deemed a deadly insult, and trigger a fuming formic acid reaction.
In Germany, they're called "currant-crappers" and in Spain "chick-pea counters". This week, Tower of Babel takes issues with nitpickers of all nations.
A person who is overly fastidious - and has to broadcast it aloud to boot - is occasionally referred to in German as a Korinthenkacker - i.e. "currant crapper". No offence to the Greek townsfolk of Corinth, needless to say. That's where currants, tiny-type raisins, come from. Korinthenkacker are so punctilious even their droppings come in raisin-size portions.
The French denote such a fussy customer in similarly vulgar terms as an enculeur de mouches (fly-fucker), for whom currants give way to flies. No lesser luminary than the novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline is said to have given this expression currency.
Never, in The Netherlands, call someone a Mierenneuker, suggesting he has intercourse with ants could be deemed a deadly insult, and trigger a fuming formic acid reaction.
