‘Bassa’ huwa xi hadd li jhobb jiddeffes u li ma tistax tafdah ghax ixandar.

No, the first is zattat or defsa, the second, papra/u

I know dublett as one who can’t resist women, down south tapit can be both men and women with the chauvinistic version being msawwat, which, it has to be said, is even more telling.

Issa ahjar, ghax Daphne ddecidiet tghallimni l-Malti.

‘Bassa’ huwa xi hadd li jhobb jiddeffes u li ma tistax tafdah ghax ixandar.

[Daphne – ‘Issa ahjar’: the usual self-delusion of your sort, Kevin, that you are the arbiters of what constitutes ‘true’ Maltese. Know that different groups of people, depending on where and how they live and where and how they were raised, give different meanings to the same words and don’t even know other words at all, because they use other ones for the same object. When I first heard somebody (Godfrey Grima as it happens) refer to a ‘skalapiedi’, I didn’t know what he meant. I had only ever known a ladder to be a ‘sellun/m’. When I said to a woman raised in Gozo that X was a proper ‘carlatan’, she asked me what I meant. And when I asked a friend’s housekeeper to please chuck over a ‘paljazza’ so I could dry off a pot, she stared at me – what? In her Maltese, a dishcloth or tea-towel is a ‘bicca’, like all other cloths. I could go on, but I won’t, as this will turn into yet another rikotta debate.]

You’re getting nervous, Kevin Ellul Bonici. Go on, do your worst.

A doormat would either be a ‘dublett’ or a tapit, Daphne. A bassa is someone you can’t trust with a secret.

[Daphne – No, Kevin, you’re wrong. In the Maltese I speak, a bassa is a person who’s a bit of a fart, a hopeless flop, somebody who allows others to do as they please with her/him. A ‘dublett’ is somebody who dances at the end of his wife’s chain, doing stuff for her that, in the Maltese way of thinking, she should do herself. And a ‘tapit’ is a doormat, yes, but strangely enough, it is used only for men presumably because in Maltese society, ‘doormat’ is the default position for most women. In the Maltese I speak, somebody you can’t trust with a secret, who talks too much, is a ‘carlatan’, and somebody you can’t trust generally because they’ll stick a knife in is a ‘gakbin’.]

My Toyota is 10 years old, Baxxter. That’s some 40-odd years younger than your closet.

Yes, Neil, and I made it known to Daphne so she could ‘play Xerlokk’ and out me. In Maltese we call such people ‘bassa’.

[Daphne – You’re wrong, Kevin. A ‘bassa’ is a doormat.]

Even when kneeling she’ll overreach her target.

The fact that she put herself into this professional/sexual situation without realising the long-term consequences speaks volumes about her.

If the little twerp stops ogling middle-aged women to try to catch their attention (even if they are accompanied by their husband) when his young-enough-to-be-his-daughter-girlfriend is not looking, it might last till then George.

Ghax Jeffrey bhal donnu jahseb li kulhadd jaqalu ghalih. Mur ghidlu miskin.