Classroom Snickering

Evil

In class today, the teacher was mentioning a phrase that is sometimes used in Mandarin. It's written as 吞吞吐吐. The figurative meaning is to hesitate in saying something, e.g., to hem and haw. But the literal meaning is "swallow swallow spit spit."

When the teachers was saying, "So you do know what it means to swallow swallow spit spit?" all the students started snickering. It took me like two whole minutes to regain my composure. Thank goodness she didn't ask anyone to explain why we were snickering. That would have been awk-waaard.