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

[stegzy.livejournal.com]

I am reliably informed by my Polish coworker that they too refer to the sensation as "MROWIENIE" or feeling like ants walking on your body. While my Algerian colleague says that in Arabic the sensation is referred to as being covered in thorns (Chook (pronounced shook)) which also applies to the sensations of both de ja vu and goosebumps.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks. There seems to be a definite European ant theme.

The Arabic one is interesting! Likening goosebumps to pins and needles makes sense (to me), but deja vu is more of a surprise!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Oh now both the Chinese and Polish person I asked also brought up goose pimples, which were "chicken skin" and "goose skin" respectively.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'd never really associated pins and needles with goosebumps before!