Out of this World

I've had an affinity for space -- worlds beyond earth, extraterrestrial beings, you name it -- ever since I can remember.  Being a child of the 1980's at the tail end of the cold war era space race may have something to do with it.  It may also have been through narrative since two of my favorite books were It Zwibble, the star-touched dinosaur and Space Witch.  When I think of something that is "out of this world," I think of it as something that must be AWESOME, in all caps.

Of course, this is not a personal language preference, "out of this world" is a standard idiomatic English expression.  It had occurred to me that this might be a specifically English saying, but it had never really occurred to me that this exact expression might exist in another language and have a directly opposite meaning from the English meaning.  As we were translating Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Le poete a sept ans" today, I found out that the world "immonde", which translates to "out of this world" in French, means "disgusting".  Um, C'EST QUOI?!  

I find this fascinating, in part, because discoveries like these reveal a certain depth of the psyche of an entire language.  How is it that this saying comes to mean something superfantastic in English and yet, in French it is deplorable?  Apparently, the French word comes from the Latin "mundus," "of the world" and "uncorrupted".  Whereas "immundus" means "corrupt" or "filthy".  So, I guess that something described as "out of this world" suggests a certain contamination from some other world that has come to bear in this world...something along those lines. 

Then, in English, the phrase has become an informal saying to express hyperbole.  I'm taking a huge guess here, but I wonder if "out of this world" evolved from the late 19th century phrase "top of the world", which was also hyperbole.  Maybe during the age of space exploration, "top of the world" sounded trite and "out of this world" was adapted in its place?  Regardless, this is one of many of those phrases that were lost on me in translation.  The discovery of this different concept of other worldliness represents one of the more fun parts of the challenge of learning and deepening my understanding of a foreign language. 

Now, I'm back to work on the last article for this French class, which ends this week.  It's been a fun ride, but having hours of French homework every night is kind of a buzz kill.