Lost in translation - Wordsmith.org

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A Korean friend of mine asked me recently if there was a word for someone who habitually stays indoors. More house-bound slob than agoraphobic, and something along the lines of couch potato, or lounge lizard. There is a slang Korean word for this, said "bangkok" and meaning roughly "room storage" (playing on the coincidental homophony with that city). And an English equivalent? I said no, and quickly changed the subject. But I'm not so sure.

Another question I was asked -- and am often asked -- was whether there was a word in English for cohabitation before marriage: a taboo in Korea. Seeing as this is not an issue in most English-speaking cultures, I am not surprised one did not immediately come to mind. I have, however, found :

Quote:

con�cu�bi�nage
noun
Law. Cohabitation without legal marriage.

which is my usual answer, but most dictionaries -- including my Korean friend's -- define this as the much less tolerated practice of keeping concubines.

Lastly, the Korean idiom "the belly-button is bigger than the belly" is used for any situation where the outlay far exceeds the return, or a similar scenario, such as buying a used car and having to spend the equivalent of a new car to get it on the road. "What do you say in English?", I was asked. The best I could offer was white elephant. Not only is this not suitable, it is not even an idiom.

Three apparently simple questions from a student of English and I... with... can't...

* Head explodes.*

Or are there words or expressions for these things in English?

Help.

2. living in sin?

3. not worth it?

there is posslq
/POS sul cue/ Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters

said to have originated as Calif. tax form terminology.

shut-in comes close, in its second usage:
2. Disposed to avoid social contact; excessively withdrawn or introverted. [AHD4]

commoration (obs.) is somewhat related: dwelling, abiding, sojourning

Shut-in is good but it might be meant to apply to someone who is kept indoors for valid reasons such as illness. There is the term "cocooning" for living at home as much as possible, having groceries delivered, etc.

Posslq, as tsuwm mentioned, works, but I haven't heard it used much lately. For the act itself we have the terms "living together", "playing house" and "shacking up", in ascending order of colloquiality.

We speak of "throwing good money after bad" to indicate an investment that ends up costing us more than it's worth. Your used car example is a good example of this.

> There is the term "cocooning" for living at home as much as possible, having groceries delivered, etc.

People who engage in such seclusion are often self-described 'home bodies' (or homebodies if you like) and they do so by choice. Apparently people are staying home far more in recent years according to a study I heard on BBC, so these terms will clearly come in handy.

I was watching a Spanish film just yesterday in which a teenager for no apparent reason suddenly decides not to leave his room any more. Even though it appears to be just a phase, and eventually he does get out, the adults around him begin talking about it as a case of hikikomori, a Japanese term that is being increasingly used to describe such behaviour. It is apparently a fairly frequent occurrence in Japan that a teenager or adult will choose to deal with the harshness of reality by doing just this. Sometimes they stay in their room for years.

Recluse, or, perhaps, oblomovian, though the latter is more for one who never gets out of bed or is so out of his dressing gown.

Is this a characternym (sp?)? Isn't this a character from, is it Gorky? Something I read way back and can't remember.

In the book of the same name by Ivan Goncharov.

>>shut-in comes close, in its second usage:
2. Disposed to avoid social contact; excessively withdrawn or introverted. [AHD4]

>Shut-in is good but it might be meant to apply to someone who is kept indoors for valid reasons such as illness.

well yeah; that was, of course, the first sense given by AHD.
-ron (shut-in nonetheless -- it's cold out there) o.

stay-at-home?

Well I certainly wouldn't abandon recluse. That seems to me to be the best word offered so far.

Quote:

[...] recluse [...] seems to me to be the best word offered so far.

This is only because no one has proposed house-potato.

I'd not have connected couch potato with the word you were looking for, said TEd with recluse abandon.