From Steven Levine, reporting from Amsterdam, on Facebook this morning:
If you have time to learn only one Dutch word, I’d say wildplassen makes an excellent candidate.
(#1) Du wildplassen ‘wild pissing’, with Du wild in the sense ‘free, loose’ (yes, it also has the sense ‘savage, fierce’, and that adds to the excellence of the signage)
The English version, also in Amsterdam (for visitors, in case they don’t get the message of the visual symbol in #1):
(#2) No public peeing. You’re pretty much obliged to use the childish euphemism pee in English, since the direct piss ‘urine’ and piss ‘urinate’ have become seen as taboo words in English (while its equivalents are just ordinary words with unsavory referents in most European languages, including Dutch); I much prefer piss, but recently have been using the playfully onomatopoetic whizz, as a way of avoiding pee (and of course the clinical and technical alternatives, unless I’m being carefully modest in my language)
Pissing on walls. (or trees, or just onto the ground wherever you happen to be) Now the Facebook discussion on the practice of Wildplassen:
— Maggie Bye: This was enough of a problem they had to make signs!
— AZ > MB: Indeed. It’s a problem everywhere. Access to facilities being hard to come by.
— AZ: Well, then pissing on walls comes to be seen as an assertion of masculinity (and is often so represented in popular culture). [And, I must admit, pissing on a wall is a lot more satisfying psychologically than pissing on the ground, not to mention a lot less likely to get piss on your shoes.]
— Julian Lander: In the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament), “pissers on the wall” is used to mean men, generally when they are about to be annihilated. It appears to show up 6 times: I Kings 14:10, I Kings 21:21, I Samuel 25:22, I Samuel 25:34, I Kings 16:11, and II Kings 9:8. (If you look in the King James Bible, look for the phrase “pisseth against the wall.”)
Wonderful: men are the people who (stand and) piss on the wall. While women (crouch and) piss on the ground.
August 3, 2023 at 9:15 am |
When I first visited the UK many years ago, I was puzzled by signs along streets saying “Commit no nuisance”. Then I crossed over to France, where I saw similar signs that said “Défense d’uriner”, and it all became clear.
August 3, 2023 at 9:20 am |
When I first visited the UK many years ago, I was puzzled by official-looking signs saying “Commit no nuisance”. Then I crossed over to France, where I saw similar signs reading “Défense d’urine”, and all became clear.
August 3, 2023 at 6:13 pm |
Amusing lyric from Joni Mitchell: “In France they kiss [piss?] on Main Street. Ooh-la-la!”
August 4, 2023 at 4:24 am |
On Facebook, Kyle Wohlmut recommends the J. Geils Band’s “Piss on the Wall”, from their Freeze Frame album.