Beware of legible clothing, J.Crew!

References to a "kiss" tee piqued my curiosity so I hopped into a store and tried it on. I found it to be  well cut and cute. You can see it on Gigi, here.  It's apparently not on the J.Crew website. And since I missed the Factory "kisses" tee, which frankly was cuter, I bought this one without thinking twice, or even once.


On the other hand, it's made by J.Crew, where the approach to spelling, grammar, rhetoric and idiomatic usage is - oh, why don't we just say it has been known to fall short of punctilious. I thought this tee would be cute for travel, which meant that deciding whether or not to keep it would depend on the work of the resident linguists at J.Crew. Talk about buyer's remorse.

Here is the list of the words on the shirt, together with some commentary. First, the easy ones (out of my head).

BISOU is French for "kiss," it's derived from the noun baiser. Variants are Bisous, bises, bzzzzz (frequently seen at the end of emails). BTW baiser as a verb means something else, so use embrasser  in company if you need a verb ....

BESO is Spanish for "kiss."

BACIO is Italian for "kiss."

BEIJO is Portuguese for "kiss." At least in Brazil. 

KISS is English for "kiss."

MUAH isn't really a word, but an onomatopoeic representation of the sound of a big smacker. Air-kissers say this while air-kissing to lend texture to the experience.

Where I didn't recognize a word, or did but thought I had to be mistaken, I turned to the internets and boy there are some real nut cases compiling dictionaries and lists of "useful" phrases out there. I didn't find anything as cute as "My postilion  has been struck by lightening," or - from my first Portuguese phrase book - "Oh, please, Mr. Barber, do not put hot oil on my head," but I did learn some sort of interesting stuff.

KISU is a relatively contemporary Japanese word, derived from English, for "kiss." There are older words of Japanese origin for "kiss," but the ipad is fighting back.

a really really badly named pub

FILI is Greek for "kiss."

HON - The word "hon" (phonetically) is part of some well-known Gaelic expressions that involve kissing but have nothing to do with romance, so I went to the computer which told me that HON is Vietnamese for "kiss," but the examples I found were unclear as to whether this is a noun or verb in Vietnamese.

PETO - well, I would not have picked these letters out of all the possible words for kiss in all the languages spoken around the world.  In Spanish and Italian, it means "fart." Or, better yet, "I fart." How romantic.  But being the fair and openminded soul that I am, I asked the computer if it meant anything (like maybe KISS) in any language at all. Well, Google claims that "PETO" means "ogre"  or carnivore in Icelandic. Munch, munch, munch.

KOSS is Icelandic for "kiss." Well, so much for the amorous ogres (see above).

Anyhow, I'm having a Bear of Very Little Brain day today, so if anyone reading this can enlighten me further about PETO, I'd appreciate it. But probably not enough to wear the tee in any Spanish- or Italian-speaking country. Including southern France, New York, New Jersey, Florida and California. Oh, also not in Iceland. Just in case. One hungry carnivore is all I can deal with.