mccReading via mastodon translate a thread by a French poster about recent actions by Macron and partway through got slapped in the face with the discovery that "I'll eat my hat" is an idiom in France as well as America ("Bon, je mange mon chapeau, et c'est pas très bon.")
Is this… how universal is this? Do they eat hats in Germany? Russia? What percentage of earth has a local-language idiom for eating hats?
Census from responses:
Eat hats: English, French, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish*, Icelandic, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian*, Hebrew
Do not eat hats: German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Yiddish, Mandarin Chinese
Contradictory data re: hat-eating: Dutch
* Hat may optionally be "old"
Jenny Fx@mcc I think they eat their shoe in Germany
@urbanfoxe I'm hearing a lot about brooms
Martijn Frazer@mcc @urbanfoxe eating your shoe is the phrase in Dutch
thomastc | frozenfractal
Emile Dingemans@Tijn @thomastc @mcc @urbanfoxe I'm Dutch and have heard it many times before. Both hats and shoes. It could be that "shoe" is more in use nowadays than "hat." Probably because people do not often wear hats. It is more funny when you can speculate of someone really will eat their shoe. I heard of people really eating their shoes after losing their bet. https://www.ensie.nl/woordenboek-van-populair-taalgebruik/als-dit-of-dat-gebeurt-eet-ik-mijn-hoed-op
