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Thursday, May 8, 2014

High Brow

An ex-minister of culture for Zapatero, a poet whom I knew a little bit back in the day, said that he was "high brow" and that they wanted somebody more low-brow. He used a rather strange calque from the English ("ceja alta"), or high eye-brow. He had a whole bit going about the lowering of the eyebrow. Yo era de la ceja alta y se pasó a la ceja baja.

Look, you don't describe yourself as high-brow in order to get people's admiration. It gives new meaning to the word supercilious.

2 comments:

  1. Pretty funny. Did you tell him that the figure refers to the forehead? (frente, right?)

    A verb has gone missing in your first sentence.

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  2. Absolutely hilarious! I used to feel completely befuddled by my Puerto Rican students’ “te llamo pa’trás”, which was supposed to mean “I’ll call you back.” But this one is even better.

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