Thread by @AdamCSharp

This is a thread of phrases similar to “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” from around the world, starting with this one…

There’s a colourful old Swedish idiom that goes hjulet snurrar men hamstern är död. It means “the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead”

It’d be foolish of me not to mention here that my next book is called THE WHEEL IS SPINNING BUT THE HAMSTER IS DEAD: A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD IN IDIOMS, PROVERBS AND GENERAL NONSENSE. So if you want more idioms like the ones in this thread, please pre-order now (link in my bio)

Another Swedish slang phrase for someone who isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer is “they don’t have all the Russians in the submarine.” There’s also one that translates to “they don’t have all the Finns in the sauna”

And speaking of Finns, a Finnish equivalent to “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” is hänellä ei ole kaikki muumit laaksossa. It means “he/she doesn’t have all the Moomins in the valley”

A French idiom for someone who’s a few clowns short of a circus is t’es pas la truite la plus oxygénée de la rivière (“you’re not the most oxygenated trout in the river”). Another is t’es pas le pingouin qui glisse le plus loin (“you’re not the penguin that slides the farthest”)

One more French option is tu as le cerveau d'un sandwich au fromage. It means “you have the brain of a cheese sandwich”

There’s a Kenyan proverb, often used when someone is being loudly ignorant, that goes something like this… “Unlike the stomach, the brain does not alert you when empty”

A list of German phrases about lack of intellect:

5. As bright as a tunnel
4. As stupid as teacher’s shit
3. Not the brightest candle on the cake
2. As stupid as soup
1. He only has a head so he need not carry the straw in his hand

Another German insult, especially popular in the 1990s, is Teletubbyzurückwinker, which means “one who waves back at the Teletubbies”

A German equivalent to “great minds think alike” is zwei Dumme, ein Gedanke, which means “two stupid people, one thought”

And a slang phrase from Austrian German that I came across a while back is der is ned des gscheiteste Fadl vom Wurf. It means “he's not the brightest piglet of the farrow”

A list of some more international insults:

5. Your brain’s like two walnuts in a jute sack (Arabic)
4. You’re without a Tsar in the head (Russian)
3. You have fewer lights than a pirate ship (Spanish)
2. Is your head a decoration? (Korean)
1. Mentally, you are a sock (Hungarian)

Another insult from Hungarian slang is káposztalé van az agyad helyén? It means “is there sauerkraut juice where your brain should be?”

* credit to @jonniker’s grandmother for that one

@jonniker An Irish phrase about lack of intelligence is “if he had another bitta wit, he’d be a halfwit.” Another one is “there’s two eejits in the village, and he’s both of them”

@jonniker A couple of versions of “a few sandwiches short of a picnic” from US English are “he’s a few tacos short of a combo plate” and “he’s a few WMDs short of a clear and present danger.” And one more, from the US South… “if that boy had an idea, it would die of loneliness”

Honourable mentions to “they’re not the fastest moped on the harbour” (from Denmark), “they have mambo in the head” (from Argentina), “it’s splashing on their lighthouse” (from the Czech Republic) and, from Australia… “the kangaroos are loose on the top paddock”

And again, if you’d like more vital language information like this, please do pre-order my latest book, THE WHEEL IS SPINNING BUT THE HAMSTER IS DEAD (out September 28th)

* shameless plugging over (for now)

I probably shouldn’t exclude the (totally legitimate) language of meme, so I’ll leave you with this one…