Lazing the day away

Welcome to another edition of SoundCzech. In today's edition we look at at expressions using the word 'líný' or ‘línej’(informal) - featured in the song Jsem tak línej by the legendary Czech pop group Olympic. Yawn. What could be more appropriate for the lazy days of summer, on a weekend when temperatures are expected to hit around 35 degrees Celsius!

Photo: Filip Jandourek, Český rozhlas

Laziness of course doesn't necessarily have to be any way connected to the heat. Someone who is lazy by nature (think Jughead in Archie comics or in a Czech context Hloupý Honza who never wants to do anything but hang around his bed in the kitchen) might be derided as being liný jako veš - as lazy as a pig (although veš means louse).

Someone who lazes around or sleeps until noon with alarming regularity (say boys in their teenage years) might be criticised by their family as líná kůže - lazy skin (I always imagine a boar hide hung on a cottage wall, just hanging around. Lazy bones would be the equivalent in English. The Czechs have an expression to get the blood flowing again: hejbni kostrou! which means get moving or literally move your skeleton, move your bones! Such a lazy person, takový lenoch!

Štrúdl, Photo: archive of Radio Prague

Someone who takes a long time to get somewhere (who was lazy and is now angry you kicked them out of bed) and has a proverbial black cloud over his head and is kicking an imaginary tin can along the road, se táhne jako smrad, is moving slow as a stench. táhnout se jako štrúdl also exists, meaning to drag one's heels, to be a slowcoach. Move it lazybones! Štrúdl is apple pastry, by the way, to be as slow as apple pastry! Now that's slow!

To come back to the Olympic song, the group's singer/guitarist Petr Janda sings, I wonder why I am so lazy, nothing makes me get up in the morning...

Actually, that doesn't sound half bad. Dr Seuss has a famous children's book about everyone getting up, up, UP, going up Mt. Dilmadilts, up you worms, you pigs on stilts, up, up today. Em, no.

On second thought, like his protagonist, I think I'll stay in bed. Maybe in the afternoon, I'll take a cab and plop myself down by the nearest watering hole and doze off in the shade on a hot summer's day. Let others work if they want. Want to mow your lawn? Feel free. Want to muck around underneath your car? By all means, don't let me stop you. I'll just lie down by this tree... and if you don't like it, hey, you can hurl all the insults you want.