Simple Tattos

Squeezed From The Eye

Today's victim wanted a proverb, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", tattooed in Hebrew on his arm. This alone is strange enough, the arm is not that far from the eye, after all.

But don't worry, it gets worse...


This lovely Hebrew tattoo, which was sent to us by Michelle, encountered several transcribing misfortunes. Eventually it mutated into a slightly misspelled "Squeezed from the eye - Squeezed from Helen". One of the funniest misspellings seen so far!

How could it happen? Well, the Hebrew equivalent of the proverb "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", literally means "far from the eye, far from the heart" and is correctly written like this:


You'd say that it looks just the same? It is not. Hebrew is all about the subtleties.


In Hebrew, the word for "far" is "Rachok", it is written with a Resh. Exchange the Resh for a Dalet and you get "Dachuk" which means squeezed or pushed away.


Now, "from the heart" in Hebrew is "mehalev". Switch the Bet (here pronounced as V) for a Nun, and you get "mehelen" - from Helen. It's a misspelled Helen, since Nun should be used in its final form when it closes a word, not the regular form we have here.


Luckily for our victim, the tattoo is quite fixable, just add a bit of ink here and there...