Hanky-Panky...
I was listening to a local oldies radio station on the way home from grocery shopping and the Tommy James and the Shondells song Hanky-Panky was playing. Tommy must have repeated Hanky-Panky three hundred times and my better half said "What is Hanky-Panky?"Knowing thee are several meanings to Hanky-Panky, I told her his girlfriend plays around. It's a slang answer and she wasn't sure what I meant.
I have a language translator app in my phone and see it only gave the word (from English to Chinese) Shouyín that sounds like show-yeen. Usually translations have synonyms to words, especially if they don't have a perfect translation. I was expecting to see something like promiscuous, but Shouyín was the only word and she was very surprised the singer repeated Hanky-Panky so many times!
When I got home I tried the translation into Google and it had the same word Shouyín. But, when I reversed it from Chinese to English, the definition was m**turbation.
Depending on the source several online dictionaries had different meanings.
Fooling around, monkey business, shenanigans, flirtation, questionable or underhanded activity... all but m**turbation.
So, for two decades Tommy's baby did the m**turbation and was naive to the whole thing. Not only me... the censors of the recording industry seemed to have missed it too!
Comments (4)
Translation from one country to another can give words different meanings.
Did you know mannerisms (especially females) also give different meanings in different countries?