• Listen

  What it means

  Literally “to pat poverty.” Means to live in poverty, to scrape by with very little — “to be dirt poor,” “to struggle to make ends meet.”

  Vocabulary

  • klepać — to pat, to slap; colloquially: to endure
  • bieda — poverty, misery

  Grammar note

  'Biedę' is the accusative of 'bieda' — direct object of 'klepać'.

  Cultural context

  The image of patting or stroking poverty as if it were a familiar companion captures the resigned, long-suffering quality of Polish folk humour about hardship.

  Intermediate

Noticed a typo, a wrong translation, or anything that doesn't look right? We'd love to fix it — just let us know via the contact page. Thank you!