woord of the Day **

**(you must be over 18 to read this post)

Doos. [DOO-uss]

Box…(mostly).

Here’s how to use it in a sentence:

When sitting around the fire in Mozambique (more on that later), talking to Lindsey (caterer extraordinaire – Food for Friends, Pretoria), if she asks what Afrikaans words you know, and you say “”Dankie", which means thankyou. Oh, and also “doos””, and her face kind of chokes a little, and she asks “and what does that mean”, if your answer is “box” you will soon learn a little lesson in Afrikaans. In fact, it does mean box, but is also a euphemism for a little something else that we may also use the euphemism “box” for in English.

When you speak further with Lindsey and her partner, Elvin (that is definitely spelled wrong, sorry), you find out that it’s a brilliant word to yell in traffic when someone cuts you off. Kind of like another word that is also a word for box, but is much less polite, and very satisfying to yell when you’re dealing with a doos on the road.

Alternatively, according to Elvin, even better than to call someone a doos, is to call them half-a-doos, because: at least you can use a doos, but a half-doos is good for absolutely nothing.

"Where did I learn such an obscure word in the first place?", you might wonder. Blame the client. We were literally sitting in a meeting talking packaging, when he broke out the Afrikaans word for box. Everyone giggled, but I assumed that was because he’s from America, so throwing out Afrikaans words is unexpected and funny. Not so much.

Luckily, Joburg has lots of badass traffic where I can try out my new word.