Lydia Risberg explores Estonian insults built around the head

Estonian has a range of insults built around the word for “head”, from “flourhead” to “woodenhead”, Lydia Risberg says in a language segment for Vikerraadio published by ERR.

Risberg begins with a pancake made with oat milk and buckwheat flour that started foaming around the edges in the pan. Her friend suggested it might be angry. People can foam with anger, she notes, but perhaps the batter was simply a “doughhead” trying to explain something.

One example she found in a language corpus reads: “My father always told me that you are a flourhead, and when it rains, you are a doughhead.” The Estonian word for dough can also be used in an expression meaning “headless dough” to describe a stupid person. Risberg plays on the forms tainas and taigen, both acceptable words for dough, and the insult tainapea, or “doughhead”.

Other insults use materials or animals: “rubberhead”, “plasterhead” and “woodenhead”, as well as “lambhead” and “ramhead”. A “bombhead” may suggest that a foolish head is hard and empty, Risberg says. Another term, “chaffhead”, refers to a worthless or empty grain.

Risberg also describes the phrase “I sneeze at what you say”, which means “I don’t care about what you are saying”. The same idea can be expressed by spitting or whistling. Meanings can develop from literal to more abstract ones, creating opportunities for language jokes and wordplay, she says. She ends by hoping her listeners will not sneeze at her talk.