Funny Nepali proverbs that still get a laugh

Spit at the sky and it lands on your own face. Talking big, or throwing insults upward at someone above you, comes back on you. The collection reads it as boasting that falls flat in reality.

The proud frog's croak is the loudest. The conceited are always the noisiest, and they think their own faults are small. The image of a puffed-up frog does most of the work.

Why would a blind man go looking for a mirror? Asking for what you cannot use, or asking about what you are not meant to know. The collection reads it as a warning not to ask about things you should leave alone.

Even Kim Jong is a cat in front of his wife. A modern, deliberately silly update of an old shape. Men in power are afraid of their wives. Nobody is certain who first put the dictator into the proverb, which is part of the charm.

Mahadev himself is lying on his back, so who will give the blessing? Mahadev is Shiva, the god of giving. If the giver does not have enough, you cannot expect much from the people below him. It is used on anyone who is asked for something when they have nothing to spare.

Neither meaning nor use, Gobinda the cow. A name of a god and a useless animal in the same breath. The collection tags this one as humour, and uses it for a person who is of no use at all.

Mother is busy being beautiful, daughter is busy being beautiful, and the duty of the kitchen stays with father. It borrows the English words beauty and duty because they rhyme, which is the joke. It is a light comment that everyone has their own job.

Parents struggle to solve problems, but the children care only about style. One of several versions of a joke about where a child's attention goes. For the whole family of them, see our article on Nepali proverbs about family.

Told that he is going to heaven, the pig asks whether there is dung there. Offering something wonderful to someone who cannot see its value. It is an old, earthy joke, and not a polite one.

He went out to relieve himself and forgot the stalk. Forgetting the one essential thing needed for the job. The picture is crude, but it is a very familiar kind of mistake.

It is the observer who feels the shame for what the one who did it does not. Second-hand embarrassment, with a bathroom reference. The collection reads it as feeling embarrassed for what someone else did.

The mother-in-law died last year, and now come the tears. Tears that arrive a year late. It is most likely a dig at a delayed or insincere reaction, though we have not found a written meaning for this one, so treat that reading as ours.