I asked a question at a linguistic discussion community. Sadly, the place has now been very quiet as well as other communities...
【My question】
In Japanese, we have this expression;
ちゃぶ台をひっくり返す
Chabu dai wo hikkuri kaesu.
means getting very angry.
The phrase "chabudai wo hikkuri kaesui" literally means to flip a chabudai over. Chabudai is a small round dining table (see below)
and this chabudai usually is used in a small room on tatami mat floor. So those who use chabudai as dinner table more likely a poor family. For instance, one example, that I want you to visualize is as follows;
A father of a poor family suddenly gets into a rage while the whole family member are eating dinner. The eldest son would say something inappropriate, then the father falls into a rage and he turns over the chabudai, the dinner table. Japan used to be very poor before, so chabudai was a dinner table which had been used by most of the people.
It is a good phrase because it represents a Japanese old custom as a part of Confucianism. The father is the most powerful one in the family and he gets angry even for a tiny little thing because he is already very tired working whole day, and the son is usually very rebellious and he has also built up the stress.
Do you have some equivalent expression in you country? Something along the casual daily scene that explains your original culture well.
Some of the answers came up, so I'd like to put some impressive ones for my self-studies;
【Answers】
One of my favorites is "die Katze aus dem Sack lassen"/"let the cat out of the bag", meaning finally revealing the actual facts; there used to be a time when people would buy a chicken or other small animal in the market, only to come home, open the bag they'd been given and discover they'd been sold a worthless cat instead.
Also: "Schwein gehabt" ("you've had (a) pig") meaning you've been lucky - because the main prize at country fairs used to be a pig, so if you won it, you were indeed lucky.(by rheasllvia)
Hm, perhaps this:
In German, this is called "Haussegen" ("house blessing"), in this case saying "May God bless this house". They used to be very popular, although they're now quite antiquated, and were often put above a door or on a prominent place on the wall. They were often embroidered. Old half-timbered houses might also have bible verses etc. put on a beam above the door if it's not just the name of the person who built the house - this is a bit more elaborate than usual.
Now, if there is a family argument, an expression for it is "Der Haussegen hängt schief" - "The house blessing is hanging crookedly".
(by lied_ohne_worte)
One from the southeastern US is "to live high on the hog," which means "to live well." It refers to the idea that the best cuts of meat on a pig, like ham and pork chops, come from the higher parts of the pig, and so the wealthier people ate those. Poor people ate things like the pig's stomach and feet. But I think it also sometimes has the sense of spending more than you can really afford; not sure exactly how that came to be part of it.
Ironically, pork belly is quite fashionable now in upscale restaurants in big cities in the US, but when I was a child, you found it only in poor grocery stories in poor neighborhoods in the south.
(by mamculuna)
and this computer game made me laugh so hard.
Came here to mention that there is an actual Japanese arcade game, complete with a table for you to pound and flip :) lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTokWiEAgPg(by hadgm)
http://linguaphiles.livejournal.com/