23. SEM PÉ NEM CABEÇA

Oh, I love this one! “Sem pé nem cabeça”, which would literally mean “with no foot nor head”. Does it make any sense? No? Good! Because that’s what it means. Something that has no foot or head, usually an idea or story, is something that makes no sense! Now how great it is that the expression for it makes no sense actually makes no sense?!

It was originated from the Latin expression nec caput, nec pedes, of same meaning. It said that a story that doesn’t make sense of have no nexus is missing parts of it, so to miss a head or a foot – the top and the bottom – would make the story miss some meaning. There are some variations in the legend, some about an inept embassy sent by the Roman senate to mediate a war, some say about a headless statue in a ritual in Crete, so there’s no consensus on its origin.

What is a consensus, though, is that someone telling you a story with no head or foot is likely to be trying to fool you.

Like when you were a kid and someone forgot to do their homework and would come up with the craziest stories, from “my dog ate it” to “I was abducted and they took my homework”. Or when a co-worker comes with this very elaborated story about how their grandma died – again. Or even that guy you’re dating who stood you up because his cat had a birthday party (saw this one on the internet, hope no one here had lived that).

The story is always so crazy that you have to give the teller credit for the creativity, because it’s going to put a puzzled expression in your face until you figure it out.

There are a lot of stories with no foot or head out there, but I promise you, dear foreign, I’ll always try my best to bring sense and reason to this blog.

Till tomorrow,

expressionada