paardenbril (blinkers)

T

ThomasK

Senior Member
(near) Kortrijk, Belgium
Belgium, Dutch
Modern people should not be wearing "een paardenbril", or literally horse glasses, horse spectacles, so we say in Flanders. It means we should not be narrowminded, rather have an open mind.

Our Dutch counterparts want us not to have "oogkleppen" (something like "eye covers"), called "'blinkers", I now find out in English. That is the origin of course: the eye covers helping horses not to get distracted...

So:
- Dutch, Flanders: paardenbril
- Dutch, Netherlands: oogkleppen
- English: blinkers

What about you? Do you have special expressions for that? (Will you also translate them literally please ?)

(I suppose tunnel vision is too medical to be used, but that would have been a different expression.... )
 
    • In German there are two different words.

    I guess from the Dutch word you are talking about the thing pirates typically wear which is an "Augenklappe" (lit.: eye clap) in German. While horses wear "Scheuklappen" (baulk claps).
     
    In Turkish:

    At gözlüğü is the litteral translation of Horse glasses and it is an existing term.

    Other than that we say:

    Dar çerçeveden bakmak = To look through a narrow frame.
     
    @ Rallino: what kind of frame is that? A window frame, or any ? That reminds: we do have the fairly uncommon word denkkader (thinking frame), but a Dutch author of 'book comics' introduced the word denkraam, which is just the same but seems to refer to windows rather.

    it reminds me of the English expression: an out-of-the-box thinker, which suggests very much the same thing, doesn't it?

    @ Frank: I wonder about my oogkleppen belong to pirates though, Frank. I mean: what is striking is that we refer to the plural always, whereas pirates surely don't wear two oogkleppen at the same time. ;-) But I could not find baulk claps.

    Scheuklappen suggests, I guess, that horses should not frightened. Correct ?
     
    ThomasK said:
    @ Rallino: what kind of frame is that? A window frame, or any ? That reminds: we do have the fairly uncommon word denkkader (thinking frame), but a Dutch author of 'book comics' introduced the word denkraam, which is just the same but seems to refer to windows rather.
    ...
    Click to expand...

    Çerçeve is both a window frame and a picture frame ;)
     
    ThomasK said:
    @ Frank: I wonder about my oogkleppen belong to pirates though, Frank. I mean: what is striking is that we refer to the plural always, whereas pirates surely don't wear two oogkleppen at the same time. ;-) But I could not find baulk claps.

    Scheuklappen suggests, I guess, that horses should not frightened. Correct ?
    Click to expand...

    Here's an "Augenklappe"
    http://www.google.de/images?hl=de&q=augenklappe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

    Scheuklappen:
    http://www.google.de/images?um=1&hl...&q=scheuklappen&aq=f&aqi=g2&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

    "Baulk" means the horse gets distracted and frightend of something
     
    In Russian there is an adjective зашоренный /zashorennyi/ derived from the word шоры /shory/ (horse blinders).
    So, I guess if I try to ltranslate the word iterally , it would be something like "behind-horse-blinder-ed"
     
    I see. So someone is зашоренный when s/he is narrow-minded.

    I am just wondering: can anyone of you express the same idea using another metaphor (not referring to horses, not even to seeing)? I suppose it is unlikely...
     
    In French:

    The horse blinkers are called œillères, and avoir des œillères (to have/wear blinkers) is to be narrowminded, or at least, to see only what you want to see.
     
    But that might be slightly different. We would then say they are blind for that (blind voor), whereas the horse glasses can hardly be put off, because most of the people don't realize they are wearing any - or think their 'glasses' do not impair their view...
     
    Czech:

    Má klapky na očích. = He has flaps on his eyes.

    klapka (sing.), klapky (nom. plur., gen. sing.) = clack, flap, clapper, clack valve;
    - it is a common technical term (like in "wing flap", "choke throttle valve", ...)
    - derived from the verb klapati = to clack, to clap; Germ. klappen, klappern;

    I think in English the term is blinder(s) (not blinkers), which means also narrow-mindedness.
     
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    I'm afraid I can't remember any horse or non-horse expression in Hungarian regarding narrow-mindedness.
     
    In Greek there's an interesting confusion; what people should not wear (if they do not want to be called narrowminded) is a case of clanging:
    We too say that people should not be wearing blinkers; however since the hellenistic times, instead of the correct word «παρώπια» (pa'ropia, pl., n.-->blinkers), the word «παρωπίδες» has prevailed (paro'piðes, pl., f.); «παρωπίς» (parō'pis, sing., f.), «παρωπίδα» (paro'piða, sing., f. in modern Greek) means...woman's mask :)

    [ð] is a voiced dental non-sibilant fricative
     
    Yes, it's an honest mistake; colloquially has prevailed, instead of the correct word "pa'ropion-->blinker", the false one "paro'pis-->woman's mask". Since the hellenistic times therefore, our horses (and our narrowminded people) wear...woman's mask
     
    ThomasK said:
    But that might be slightly different. We would then say they are blind for that (blind voor), whereas the horse glasses can hardly be put off, because most of the people don't realize they are wearing any - or think their 'glasses' do not impair their view...
    Click to expand...

    Ok, I understood it as narrow minded and narrow sighted/with tunnel vision. Actually I think both concepts overlap a little, as people that have tunnel vision often do so because of their narrow mindness. They do not want to see anything that does not fit in their mind.

    The explanation of the French phrase is that with blinkers one can see only exactly what he/she is looking at, without seeing the bad sides, or without seeing anything that might contradict them (and even though turning the head a little bit would be enough to see more, they don't).
    I don't think there's eye- or blindness-related words *specifically* for 'narrow minded' in French.
     
    I got some ideas from Zsuzsanna, a frequent visitor, by e-mail:
    I can tell you that there are terms involving horses... The thing is that the one that is the most obvious - that we usually show with a movement of the hands: putting your open hands to the side of the face (a hand at each side) to indicate the leather "equipement " a horse has not to be able to see to the left and to the right which, for a man indicates that he is narrow minded. (I'll write in the thread if I remember the term that goes with it.)
    Click to expand...
    There is another which may be a bit special: megy, mint a vak lo = goes like a blind horse - that is when one doesn't really take the pain to look where he is going, it may indicate either sort of unrefined (brutal) manners or some consumption of illicit products (/alcohol or simple illness) that can make you go any direction your feet take you.
    Although this is not really about narrow mindedness, but indirectly... maybe could refer to it from a certain distance...
    Click to expand...
    The latter is not quite what I am looking for, but it reminds me of that... Thanks, Zs !
     
    In Bulgarian it's капаци (pl., sg. капак = lid). Кон с капаци can also be a narrow-minded person (because a horse with such things sees very narrowly and this "narrowness" is transferred to people's minds).
     
    Don't worry, in this way I am learning as well. But then: you call that person a horse (with ...) ... We only refer to the blinders in Dutch, and forget about the horse ;-); lots of people even do not realize the blinders refer to horses.
     
    Interestingly in Czech narrow-mindedness is úzkoprsost, lit. narrow-breast-ness or narrow-chest-ness, from úzká prsa (= narrow breast/chest).

    In German: Engherzigkeit (narrow-heartedness) and Engstirnigkeit (narrow-forehead-ness).
     
    hui said:
    Finnish: silmälaput (eyepatches, another meaning is horse blinders)
    Click to expand...

    The metaphorical expression is then laput silmillä, "patches on one's eyes".

    Hän kulkee aina laput silmillä eikä osaa ajatella suunnitelman todellisia vaikutuksia.
    Näyttää siltä, että näitä päätöksiä on taas tehty laput silmillä.

    By the way, "narrow-minded" is in Finnish kapeakatseinen (narrow-looked) or ahdasmielinen (crowded-minded).
     
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    Thanks, both of you!

    And indeed, those references to heart, breast and forehead are interesting additions! We do have something similar in Dutch, but a variant of narrow-minded-ness: eng-geestig-heid. But I think I'll start a new thread for this aspect, as in these cases we are referring to the inside, but we do refer to parts of the body metaphorically.
     
    Hallo ThomasK, and you others in this thread, although it´s a long time since you wrote! I´m all new on this forum, so please excuse me if I´ve missunderstand some of the circumstances. But I am so curious about this discussion of Horse glasses! When reading old swedish military lists from 1744, I´ve found lot´s of horses wiyh "glasses" and "Spada Romana", so now I´m trying to find out more about the historical meaning in this expressions. Horses, and dogs, could have "glasses", meaning they had not so much coulor in their eyes, for horses this ment they where aspecially good for battle, they would be more succesful! Therefore I find it very interesting that you in Belgium have a similar expression in "een paardenbril! Way back a lot of Belgians came to Sweden for mining and as blacksmiths, so some excange in belives, and language may accured, don´t you think?
     
    Hi ALoT, I hope there has been no misunderstanding. It has nothing to do with real glasses, but only with this, kind of patches stopping horses from seeing too much;-)... Thus horses become more 'useful', as they can/ have to concentrate more, buth they are not like real glasses. Would you have a picture showing what you are referring to ???
     
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    In Swedish: Gå inte med skygglappar = don´t walk (trough life, understood) with paardenbril, oogkleppen, blinkers.
     
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    In Japanese, we have an equivalent 色眼鏡(iromegane-colored glasses), which figuratively refers to looking on something through a biased viewpoint.

    色眼鏡で見るiromegane-de mir-u(see something through a colored glasses)
     
    In Chinese, it's 有色眼鏡(Glasses with colors), but there is another more colloquial version, 有色眼光(eyesight/vision with colors), the 眼光 means how you see things, so it indicates "judgement".
    用有色眼光看... means "Judging.../be judgmental towards..."
    Note that 有色眼光 can be related to "sexual thoughts", too because in Chinese 色(color) also means "sexual/perverted/erotic"
     
    Frank78 said:
    In German there are two different words. I guess from the Dutch word you are talking about the thing pirates typically wear which is an "Augenklappe" (lit.: eye clap) in German. While horses wear "Scheuklappen" (baulk claps).
    Click to expand...
    bibax said:
    In German:[...] Engstirnigkeit (narrow-forehead-ness).
    Click to expand...
    The Japanese and Chinese posts made me think of another expression that can be added to the list: etwas durch seine eigene Brille sehen (lit. to see something [only] through one's own glasses/spectacles) i.e. to see something from a particular angle based on one's own knowlege or experiences only, without taking other viewpoints into consideration.
     
    In Catalan:

    horse blinkers = ulleres (same word used for 'glasses') or aclucalls, derived from the verb aclucar 'close the eyes' + suffix -all.

    I can't think of any use of ulleres for 'narrow-minded'. The related meaning can be found in the use of the word mira, which is the sight of a gun, a viewfinder, and other optically related things. Being un home de poques mires ('a man of few sights') or de mires estretes ('of narrow sights') means 'being narrow-minded'.
     
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