I saw her today, I saw her face. It was the face I loved.

[venta]

Earlier today I was reading on Wikipedia about "paresthesia". Have you ever suffered paresthesia? I imagine you have, it's the proper name for pins-and-needles.

I'm pretty sure that any UK English speaker would understand "pins and needles", and that relatively few would understand paresthesia. I don't know about the rest of the English-speaking world (do you?) If I'd been reporting pins and needles as a symptom, it wouldn't even have occurred to me that that there might be a proper term for it.

Switching Wikipedia to German told me that they call it "Ameisenlaufen", so in Germany you don't suffer from the pricking of pins, but from ants running on you.

French Wikipedia wasn't playing, but Google translate helpfully rendered "pins and needles" as "Avoir des fourmis" which I think also indicates they have the ants.

(Google translate unhelpfully turns pins and needles into "Pins und Nadeln" in German, which is inconsistently literal.)

Does anyone out there have any news from other languages? And whether the slang term is used almost universally in preference to the medical term? Or indeed any English alternatives?

It's never before struck me that it's quite odd that we use the metaphor almost exclusively, and to the exclusion of its literal meaning.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I use the word paraesthesia rather a lot but that's because it's one of my most obvious symptoms, along with peripheral neuropathy. I know far too many words to do with the neurological system now. :(

[venta.livejournal.com]

... And I have learned lots of words like posteolateral and proprioception recently. Let no-one say illness/injury isn't educational :(

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

On the plus side, they're great for Scrabble, if you find the opportunity to use them. I did get to play "neuropathic" in a recent game for about a zillion points. (Over "path" and a double word score.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Nice one!