Wallflower
In a figurative sense, wallflower is called a person that is only neglected (by the opposite sex). Most of the time, the term refers to girls or women, as is the case in a statement that says that a wallflower is a girl who is “little or not asked at all when dancing”.
meaning
The term comes from the image of the flower growing individually on the wall, which ekes out its existence far away from other conspecifics, e.g. B. the wallflower also called cymbal herb .
Another explanation comes from the Middle Ages. After the meal, the ladies sat on the ledges of the wall and waited until they were asked to dance. The ladies who were not asked were called wallflowers. Friedrich Spielhagen used the term in this way when he wrote in his novel Faustulus : “But educate a mother her daughter as it should be, and she can answer for it before God - the good child should be safe at the balls as To wither wallflowers ”.
Other uses
Even a person who is very reserved and introverted and therefore has little or no contact with the opposite sex is called a wallflower. Rather jokingly is the Skat , a player who corroborated, not exploits his game and fits under value, called a wallflower.
Cultural references
In the feature film We ask for a dance , Hans Moser points out to Hans Holt in the dance school that he is obliged to take care of the wallflower and not just to devote it to his preferred partner.
An episode of the American series Addams Family is about the giant servant Lurch being trained in dance by his mistress for a servant ball because he suffers from being a wallflower.
The epistolary novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower by the American author Stephen Chbosky quotes the wallflower in the title - a reference that will be lost in the German translation Maybe tomorrow, however. The book was filmed in 2012 with Logan Lerman and Emma Watson in the lead roles.
In 2009 the crime scene: Wallflower was filmed.
Bob Dylan's 1971 song Wallflower is about a wallflower. In 1990 Dylan's son Jakob founded the band The Wallflowers .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Knaur: The German dictionary . Munich 1985, p. 650.
- ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Spielhagen,+Friedrich/Romane/Faustulus?hl=mauerblumchen