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Arabic · Arabic scriptProverb: Verified

«عَمْيَه وْعَرْجَه وِكِيعَانْهَا خَارْجَهْ»

Meanings

Each meaning is reviewed on its own.

Meaning: Verified
English translation

She's blind, she limps, and her elbows poke out from sheer thinness.

Literal wording

Blind, and lame, and her elbows sticking out.

Meaning and lesson

The saying sketches a figure who cannot see, walks with a limp, and is so wasted by thinness and sickness that the bones at her elbows jut out. Each added detail stacks another affliction onto the last, building a picture of total physical misfortune.

Though its grammar is feminine, it is applied to anyone in whom numerous bodily defects are gathered together. The force lies in accumulation: one flaw might be overlooked, but the expression piles them up to stress that nothing about the person's physical condition is spared.

When it is used

Historically used as a blunt, mocking description of someone whose body seems to collect one flaw after another, such as blindness, a limp, and visible gauntness. It mocks disability and illness, so modern use can easily seem cruel; reserve it for quoting or discussing the expression, not describing real people.

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