To "hold one's thumbs"
Hello and welcome to SoundCzech. Today's idiom comes from "Moje malá válka" or "My little war", a song by the popular singer-songwriter Jaromír Nohavica. The phrase we'll learn today is the Czech equivalent of "to keep one's fingers crossed for someone" or "držet někomu palce". The sentence to look out for is "držte mi prosím palce", which means "please (prosím) keep your fingers crossed for me"...
The Czech phrase "držet někomu palce" literally translates as "to hold one's thumbs for someone". Here, "držet" is "to hold" and "palce" is thumbs (one thumb is a "palec"). The most common form of the phrase is "budu ti držet palce", which means I will keep my fingers crossed for you...
As I said earlier, the song is called "My little war" and in it Jaromír Nohavica talks about how he is getting ready for battle. Judging from his other lyrics, he's most probably not talking about a real war but rather an internal battle. In the part of the verse you can hear, he's very scared of what he's about to face and says it's going to be very bloody so "please keep your fingers crossed for me": "držte mi prosím palce"...
And that's the end of this edition of SoundCzech. Join us again next week when we'll be back with another new phrase. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you: "budu Vám držet palce" that it all works out well.
