Word of the day: formication.

No, formication.

It’s Wouter’s brilliant translation of one of my favourite Dutch words, mierenneuken. Idiomatically this is similar to English ‘nit-picking’1 but literally it means having sex with ants (mieren–neuken — the pictures should make everything clear, for those who don’t speak the language).

A shame it doesn’t carry the usage that mierenneuken does… but languages change as usage changes. Take this as a call to arms: go forth and formicate!

Notes:

  1. Thanks, Wikipedia — my previous rough translation was ‘splitting hairs’, which captures neither the negativity nor the entomology. [↪]