Come along to our free event: Adam Sharp presents - An Idiom Abroad.

Room 309 in the Rivers Edge Building at University of Tasmania, Inveresk.

In Lithuanian slang, a lazybones is “a director of free air.” In Norwegian, “a flaccid fish.” And in Danish… “a sluggish banana.”

In Welsh, it doesn’t rain cats and dogs… it rains old ladies and sticks. In Estonian, it rains little boys and machetes. And in Uruguayan slang: “it’s raining penguins headfirst.”

An Idiom Abroad is a one-hour show (part reading, part monologue, part stand-up) that takes audiences on a journey through Adam Sharp’s most popular lists of international idioms, proverbs, and gloriously untranslatable expressions, with asides and anecdotes throughout.

Halfway through, the audience is invited to compose the best curse for their worst enemy. The winning entry at a previous festival was “may the available petrol pump always be on the wrong side for your car.” There is a prize.

Adam Sharp is the author of The Correct Order of Biscuits and The Wheel Is Spinning But the Hamster Is Dead (both Hachette), writes a column on international idioms for the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and is the 2026 Hedberg Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania.

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