Every kind of transaction has its own lingo, from stock trading to dating—and international corruption is no different. In the BBC News Magazine, two U.K. academics—David Henig, from the University of Kent, and Nicolette Makovicky, from the University of Oxford—recently surveyed some of the top ways from around the world to refer to bribes and unofficial favors.
In “Stinking Fish and Coffee: The Language of Corruption,” Henig and Makovicky identified 10 top international corruption euphemisms:
- Cash for soup (Turkish)
- Respect (Azeri)
- A fish starts to stink at the head (Turkish)
- Gratitude (Hungarian/Mandarin)
- Under the table (English/French/Farsi/Swedish)
- Something small (Swahili)
- Money for tea (Pashto/Farsi)
- Cash for questions (English)
- Nokia box (Hungarian)
- Little carp (Czech)
Hat tip to our Compliance Insider columnist, Alexandra Wrage, who passed this along via her Twitter feed, @AlexandraWrage.
