Do crazy Germans need more cups?
Random German Idiom of the Day: “Nicht mehr alle Tassen im Schrank haben.” – literally this German expression means “to not have all the cups in the cupboard anymore” and is one of many ways that Germans accuse each other of being crazy:
“Du hast wohl nicht mehr alle Tassen im Schrank!” – “You must have lost your marbles!”
“Er hatte bestimmt nicht mehr alle Tassen im Schrank.” – “He’d surely lost his mind!”
A popular (though unsubstantiated) belief is that the reference is not to the actual dishes, but rather comes from the (allegedly) Yiddish word “toshia”, meaning “mind”. A more likely explanation is that, drawing an analogy to the proverbial English lost marbles, a sane person has a complete set of something whereas an insane person does not.
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