WotD: unsurance

[muckefuck]

1. Verunsicherung
2. veronzekering
3. inseguros
4. dessegurança
5. dessurance
6. diswiriant
8. 포현 (包險)
9. 抱險 bàoxiǎn

Notes: The inspiration for this entry (as richardthinks correctly surmised) was the name of the Austrian novelty band Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung, which is a twist on the name of an insurance company. The German word for "insurance" can be analysed as "making sure/certain (sicher)". Inserting the negative prefix turns this into "making unsure/uncertain". Since the English and Romance words are formed similarly, more-or-less the same trick works with them. So also Welsh yswiriant (from gwir "true, certain").

Farther afield, it becomes more challenging. I'm stuck on the Irish since Gaelic prefers derivatives of árach "bail, contract". (The ultimate meaning is "something binding".) For Chinese, I swapped out the character 保 bǎo "protect, defend" for 抱 bào "embrace", yielding a novel compound meaning "embracing danger". I tried doing the same with Korean, but I'm not sure the pun will be recognisable except in the hanja version.

aadroma says he'll ponder ways to make similar puns in equally exotic languages. In the meantime, I encourage the rest of you to create your own punning coinages.