Moscheles’ Blunder

Ignaz Moscheles—friend of Beethoven, teacher of Mendelssohn, pianist, composer, and a major musical force—spent more than twenty years living in England. He had the artistry down. English idioms, less so.

Not long after he arrived, he was at a dinner where, after the table was cleared, the hostess asked which fruit he would like. Moscheles reached for the English he’d picked up from a dictionary and answered, very politely, that he would like to be helped to “some sneers.”

The room erupted.

Mortified, he quickly explained what had happened. While studying examples in his dictionary he had learned that the phrase “not to care a fig” could be glossed with the verb “to sneer.” He’d made the leap that “sneer” must be the proper English word for *fig*—and asked for it with complete confidence.

Foreigners laugh at our mistakes all the time, he said. Fair’s fair: sometimes we get to laugh back.