"'No, thank you,' Desai said. 'I prefer tea. That dessert filled me to the scuppers.'
"'The what? - Never mind, I seize the idea, if not the idiom.'
"Though each was fluent in the other's principal language, and their vocal organs were not very different, it was easiest for Desai to speak Anglic and Uldwyr Eriau."
-Poul Anderson, The Day Of Their Return IN Anderson, Captain Flandry: Defender Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, February 2010), pp. 74-238 AT 3, p. 83.
So Desai did not translate "filled me to the scuppers" into any Eriau equivalent but Ydwyr understands the gist of the phrase in context. But what are scuppers? A nautical term but meaning what? On a "sportfisherman" yacht:
"There were scuppers back there to drain the water out, of course..."
-Donald Hamilton, The Revengers (London, December 2015), 34, p. 44.
Of course. Thank you, Donald Hamilton and Matt Helm. We have got to that time of the evening for other reading but sometimes there is a connection, however tangential or trivial.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But even tangential connections can be interesting.
Ad astra! Sean
Scuppers are found at the top outside of the hull -- it's analogous to "packed to the gills".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Sort of like the gutters many houses have, scuppers drain away water and other kinds of fluids.
Ad astra! Sean
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