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.



27 comments:

  1. I read that it is Valencian, the historical and official name of the Romance language, spoken in the Valencian Community in Spain. Hope this puts your mind at ease. I do agree that the factory shirt was cuter.

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    1. Hi, Blue Booby! thanks for the info - but given the slim-to-none chance that speakers of Valencian would see the shirt on me, as opposed to the strong likelihood that speakers of Italian and Spanish would (I hang out in Nawt Jersey a lot and that's likely to increase as November nears - I think discretion may be the better part of valor.

      How do you say "kiss" in Klingon?

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    2. There is no Klingon word for kiss, silly. Klingons are about war not love. I shall now call above mentioned shit "the fart shirt". I thank you for that.

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    3. I really meant to type shirt instead of shit. Really what's the difference though. Have a lovely week end.

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  2. If it eases your mind at all, fart in Spanish is pedo not peto. And, I think, in Italian, it's peto, (without the accent over the "o" - just to be clear in case the computer erases it from my comment when converting the fonts), not petó as printed on the shirt. Most from Barcelona would recognize petó as kiss, and you might come across some Catalans in Newark :) Oh, and beijo is Portuguese for kiss in Portugal too.

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    1. Although, honestly, the accent mark is hard to see, so you may not want to risk it anyway :)

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  3. Ok, you've piqued my curiosity. I am very interested in the translations as well. WFF, if you hang out in NORTHERN New Jersey ( as some of us like to pronounce it) you might need to apprise us, so we (AJC and I) can commiserate with you.

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    1. that sounds like fun! I'll be the one in the zipped-up jacket and big sunglasses.

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  4. Well, I'm stuck on the "Muah" part of this; this has never occurred to me so I am an air-kiss virgin, I guess. My mother will be happy.

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    1. hi, Lane, I just took another look at the list of words and now I think it may be a plot summary of a Woody Allen project in development.
      kiss
      kiss
      kiss
      airkiss
      fart
      kiss, kiss, kiss
      kiss my a**
      kiss

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  5. This is too funny. Peto is definitely 'fart' in Italian.
    Although that is the correct term, in the common language there are other terms used that are far more popular and well known, such as 'scoreggia'.

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    1. aha, that's why I didn't recognize it right away! thank you, Cris!

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  6. I'm glad we have brain boxes on this blog...would be disturbing to mix the farts with the kisses in any language. I do love that kissy tee, have seen it somewhere else living up a tuxedo at night which would be cool too!

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    1. this has been so much fun in a goofy kind of way... I'm going to stalk the other tee.

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  7. Stop it, all of you! I cannot put on my face when I'm laughing so hard.

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  8. And my word verification was eedonla. Fitting, somehow. That's probably Klingon or J.Crew for something ...

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    1. can't thin of anything but I'm sure one of the charming readers can!

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  9. That PETO stopped me because I had a feeling that it didn't fit. But I figured if someone is reading and staring that far down my shirt, there's an entirely different problem. I knew another language tee would have issues. They're consistent about that! Great investigation :)

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  10. Agree with Anon above, Peto is not fart in Spanish, so you're good in Latin America and Spain, though I can't vouch for Italy. I'm sure there's a CFS logic to the relationship between kiss and fart "We have paired the most loving and the most disdainful acts in a tee that says "fall". We love it with our nylon blend cardigan and a statement necklace. Wash telepathically with fairy dust".

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    1. Luvvin this comment. Anthropologie Blogger!

      I'm now thinking it'a a recently discovered script for Samuel Beckett's only romantic play, sadly never produced .

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  11. Peto means fart in Chile. I read the t-shirt before reading your commentary and thought, "Why do they say 'fart' on this shirt?"

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    1. Thanks, Golddigger, I imagine every Latin country has idiomas that mean something different in every other Latin country!

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