Zlom vaz

We are throwing you in the deep end today, to employ the English idiom, not only because we trust in your native intelligence and powers of language acquisition, but also because this is the perfect place from which to ask the question of exactly how sadistic are the people of the nation you have chosen to call home, that they should desire of friends and colleagues such a violent end? This is a theme we will pursue for the next few of articles of the series.

There are, as is ever the case with popular phrases, a myriad of wildly differing explanations for why this has come to be. As far as the English idiom goes, the phrase may indeed suggest violence, with actors being encouraged to perform with such brio that the audience would stamp their approval, as audiences in Greek plays were wont to do, with such vehemence that they would literally break their leg.

More genteel is the alternative explanation that the ‘break’ concerned is merely aesthetic, the break of the line of their leg during a bow, when one leg was placed behind the other, or indeed, a break in the line of the leg to kneel to collect the money Elizabethan audiences would throw onto the stage. This explanation is very much in the minority since in all variants upon this phrase, one common thread is the wishing of bad luck to evade a taboo on too directly wishing good luck. There is, it seems, a powerful superstition ubiquitous in Theatrical circles, that to wish good luck is actually bad luck.

There seems, for this reason, to be a variation upon the tradition of not wishing good luck in every culture, and thus every language. Each seems to express something of the national culture. The Russians wish good luck by saying “neither down nor feathers,” something which derives from an old hunters’ phrase for coming back empty handed. The pat reply is “to the devil.” In Turkey it is common to say “break the devil’s leg.” The French, most characteristically, perhaps, merely utter the single word “merde,” which needs no translation, and to which the conventional response is a growl.

The Czechs then, are not alone in willing your misfortune, they are merely, as is often the case, rather more fervent than other nations in the way they go about it. As to whether this is an expression of something buried deep within their natural character, we wish you the best of luck in finding out!

GRAMMAR NOTE: ZLOM is the familiar form of the imperative of the verb ZLOMIT which takes the accusative. VAZ is unchanged in the accusative.

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