2. There should be a word for the tendency to assume others are like oneself combined with wishful thinking. I was reminded of this when reading this, from a US citizen apparently fed up with immigration into his native country:
We are going to have mass deportations and a total immigration timeout in this country beginning in 2011-2012 due to massive civil unrest and extreme discontent throughout the land.(By the way, pending decent operationalizations of "mass deportations", "massive civil unrest" and "extreme discontent", I'm willing to bet against this prediction.)
I'm pretty sure there are no words for both of these in German and have never come across any in English. Anyone?
3 comments:
1. How about "hyperbole"? e.g. "I like a bit of hyperbole, and anyone who doesn't should be flayed alive".
2. It's not exactly the right term, but "living in cloud cuckoo land" is a rather old fashioned english term for "not on this planet". It comes from Aristophanes, IIRC.
"Hyperbole" doesn't convey *quite* the right meaning on its own... hyperbolic simile would...
Hello, gentlemen,
I'm still thinking about whether "hyperbolic similie" is exactly what I was looking for. I feel it isn't, but can't say why. Stupid brain!
Concerning "cloud cuckoo land", that is interesting because in German we have the term "Wolkenkuckucksheim" (Wolken = clouds; Kuckuck = cockoo; Heim ~ Home) denoting roughly the same idea. Probably imported from English and it has been in the process of going out of fashion for some fifteen years or so.
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