- YIDDISH PHRASE
- דיר-נישט מיר-נישט
Phrase Entry
ENGLISH TRANSLATION(S)
guileless, unpremeditated - perhaps "offhandedly" would be the best English equivalent
EXAMPLE(S)
דאס פריילעכע אפיצירל פלעגט דיר-נישט מיר-נישט ארויסנעמען דעם טייסטער...
NOTES
The broader context of this scene is someone who is involved in smuggling letters to a prisoner is "accidentally" dropping coins out of his wallet to distract the guards.
COMMENTS
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Makhno
!!MAYBE!!
I don't think it's "surreptious". There is a German phrase which goes "mir nichts, dir nichts". Taken literally it makes no sense. The phrase means "without thinking" or "without hesitation" or "guileless". Here is an example in German/English/Yiddish.
Wir unterhielten uns und mir nichts, dir nichts zieht er eine Waffe.
Wa talked to each other and suddenly he drew a gun.
Mir hobn gereydt un dir-nisht mir-nisht tsit er a vofn.Maybe my explanation is wrong, in particular the Yiddish "tsien" is not spelled correctly, I think. But maybe it's right.
1 May 2014, 9:42 am
This is quite an interesting phrase. Can anyone provide an example of how it is used in context?
1 May 2014, 9:36 am