# BCSM: na visokoj nozi



## pastet89

Zdravo,

Šta znači "na visokoj nozi"?

Hvala unapred


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## Enquiring Mind

[To live - živeti] the high life, [to live] like a lord, [to live] extravagantly, to have all the good (material) things in life - ovisno o kontekstu.


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## jasio

Just curious: does it refer to a leg or just to  a foot? In Polish there is an (almost?) identical idiom, with apparently the same meaning: "na wysokiej stopie" - referring to a foot.


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## Enquiring Mind

I'm inclined to think it's probably "foot", and the same expression exists in Czech, Slovak and Russian (except in Russian it's a "wide" foot). The origin isn't clear. According to this (junior.ru) Russian source, in the Middle Ages King Henry II of England had a growth on his big toe and had to wear shoes with long curled-up front ends, and the nobles then imitated the idea. But we don't have any similar phrase in English except, maybe, "live the high life", which has nothing to do with the length of one's shoes.

I've seen other explanations that suggest it comes from the idea that rich people who didn't have to do menial work wore high heels, and others that it derives from the "foot"("pied") as a unit of length so if you were rich, you lived on a high "ratio" or "measure" of expenditure.


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## nimak

In Macedonian there is the expression *живее на висока нога* (žívee na vísoka nóga), which in Zoze Murgoski's _"Macedonian-English dictionary of idioms_" is explained as: _live it up; live in clover; live high off the hog_.


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## Panceltic

Slovenian: živeti na veliki nogi (to live on a big foot)


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## jasio

Enquiring Mind said:


> I'm inclined to think it's probably "foot", and the same expression exists in Czech, Slovak and Russian (except in Russian it's a "wide" foot). The origin isn't clear. According to this (junior.ru) Russian source, in the Middle Ages King Henry II of England had a growth on his big toe and had to wear shoes with long curled-up front ends, and the nobles then imitated the idea. But we don't have any similar phrase in English except, maybe, "live the high life", which has nothing to do with the length of one's shoes.


Thank you. If the idiom is known virtually unchanged across virtually all slavic languages, I would perhaps naively locate it some time before the Hungarians separated the north from the south. So it would be closer to the king Arthur rather than Henry. ;-) 
I don't have any evidence for that though. 

Any idea if similar idioms exist in neighboring non - slavic languages?


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## Panceltic

I can confirm there is “auf großem Fuß leben” in German (to live on a big foot).


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## Enquiring Mind

And in French too "vivre sur un grand pied".


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## jasio

So my idea must have been wrong. Anyway, I wonder, what language might have had so broad influence then.


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## Zec

I've always interpreted _noga_ in _živjeti na visokoj nozi_ as 'leg' rather than as 'foot'. Might be because _noga_ is prototypically 'leg', rather than 'foot'. It was quite a surprise to see 'foot' being used in other languages' equivalents of this idiom!


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## jasio

Zec said:


> I've always interpreted _noga_ in _živjeti na visokoj nozi_ as 'leg' rather than as 'foot'. Might be because _noga_ is prototypically 'leg', rather than 'foot'. It was quite a surprise to see 'foot' being used in other languages' equivalents of this idiom!


That's why I asked about it in the first place: In Polish the word 'noga' ('leg') also exists, and the inflected form 'nozi' is quite consistent with the Polish 'nodze' - and even more so with what I would expect it to sound in Czech or Slovak. In Polish we say about 'high foot', ('stopa', 'na wysokiej stopie'), but such semantic shifts are quite common between the languages, so I was curious it if was a slightly different idiom or a narrowing the meaning of 'noga' to mean only the foot.


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## Zec

As for the origin of this idiom, I remember hearing once that it refers to the old practice of nobles wearing high-heeled or platform shoes (cf. the famous image of Louis XIV in the article). But it seems to make more sense in languages where it's a high leg/foot (only Croatian, Macedonian?) than in those where it's a big leg/foot (all others?).


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## jasio

Zec said:


> As for the origin of this idiom, I remember hearing once that it refers to the old practice of nobles wearing high-heeled or platform shoes (cf. the famous image of Louis XIV in the article). But it seems to make more sense in languages where it's a high leg/foot (only Croatian, Macedonian?) than in those where it's a big leg/foot (all others?).


In the shed of the discussion, the latter considers only Slovenian, as far as I can tell. 

In Polish it's a high foot (which is consistent with the presumably French origin, if you consider high popularity of the French language among nobility and educated classes since ~17th-18th century until ~WW2), so it is in the Czech (except that it's a high leg rather than foot, Vysoká noha). In Russian and Ukrainian it's a broad leg instead (Як жити на широку ногу, якщо мало грошей). ALthough in Russian it can also be a big leg (На широкую ногу (жить) - Крылатые выражения, афоризмы - Отрезал.РУ).


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## Mačak pod šlemom

It could really mean "foot" rather than "leg".
In Serbian/Croatian all the idioms that in English use "foot" ("stopalo" in Serbian) are using "noga" (literary "leg" in English). For example, the name of the sport in Croatian is "nogomet" (football). The word "stopalo" is seldom used in everyday discourse. Only when you have to specifically express that you refer to "foot" as a part of the body, and not as a function of body. It is exactly the same with "hand" and "arm". We shake hands ("pružiti ruku / rukovati se"), but we do not say "pružiti šaku" but "pružiti ruku" ("šaka" - hand, "ruka" - arm). "Prsti na mojoj ruci" - means "fingers on my hand". I hold my bag in my "ruka" rather than "šaka".


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## mvkj

I would say that noga and stopalo have very distinct meanings, in a sense that noga is leg, and stopalo is foot, and the similarity in meaning comes mostly in idoms. The real translations are really 1-to-1, and if you would translate a text that is not an idiom you would make a distinction in translating. But it is true that most expressions use noga as opposed to foot, and in everyday language it's more common to use noga.


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## cHr0mChIk

I'd disagree that it's 1-1. I believe noga is used for both leg and foot most of the time. Even when my foot hurts, I'd say "boli me noga". "Stopalo" is used significantly more rarely.

Same thing is for the hand and arm. If someone asked me how to say hand in Serbian, I'd say "ruka". Ruka is used for both most of the time.

Perhaps you're referring to scientific articles where the two are differentiated more precisely.


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## Mačak pod šlemom

mvkj said:


> I would say that noga and stopalo have very distinct meanings, in a sense that noga is leg, and stopalo is foot, and the similarity in meaning comes mostly in idoms. The real translations are really 1-to-1, and if you would translate a text that is not an idiom you would make a distinction in translating. But it is true that most expressions use noga as opposed to foot, and in everyday language it's more common to use noga.


When we speak about anatomy of the body, it is 1-to-1: ruka=arm, šaka=hand, noga=leg, stopalo=foot. But, in translating usual speech, it is not 1-to-1.
 "I'm holding it in my hand" is translated "držim to u ruci"; "I kicked the door with my foot" is "udario sam vrata nogom"; "I stand on my own feet" - "Stojim na sopstvenim nogama" etc... thousands of examples...


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