Quoting Adam Walker <carrajena@...>:
> --- Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...> wrote:
> > But never mind. As the Chinese mystics probably
> > never
> > said (but could have said), "La bave du crapaud
> > n'atteint pas la blanche colombe." (1)
> >
> > (1) Toad's slaver doesn't reach the snow-white dove.
> >
>
> So that's why we don't understand you. You just can't
> spit far enough to reach us on our branches.
>
> Oh, and "slaver" looks very much like you just had out
> your translating dictionary. As I told my students in
> Taiwan over and over -- never trust the things.
> English speakers (at least ones on this side of the
> pond) almost never use "slaver". Over here it's
> slabber, which is the stuff that runs down one's face
> and drips off one's chin when one is not careful to
> swallow often enough (or has just had work done at the
> dentist and is still waiting for the lidocane to wear
> off). The stuff which is expelled at high velocity
> and might be used in an attempt to hit a bird in the
> branches of a tree (but is more likely to end up
> falling back into one's own eye) is called spit.
I took "toad's slaver" to mean someone who deals in enslaved toads ...
Andreas