Does anyone of you know the German 0-8-15 (Null, acht, fünfzehn)? The interesting thing is that it’s very common in German although not many Germans know its origin but it doesn’t seem to have any equivalent in any other language.
Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia entry on 0-8-15 is in German only so there is no chance of it spreading into other cultures. What a shame
What does it exactly mean? I looked it up in a bilingual dictionary, and I see that it means “ordinary, banal, run-of-the-mill”. Is that correct? I also see that it comes from the military jargon (if I can correctly understand what it reads here).
On a side note, I have lots of idioms in Venetian (which is my mother tongue even before Italian). Can I submit one of them to this forum? Or is it off-topic?
2 Likes
Hi Ferdinand, yes, 0–8-15 means “banal”, “simple”, “not creative” and it as far as I know the expression stems from the WWI when 0-8-15 was the name of the standard rifle used by the German soldiers. Sure, please do submit your Venetian idioms along with an explanation. Grazie mille.