**1. Introduction**

There is no single reason that explains why people would accept or reject insects as food. Vabø and Hansen [1] in connection with food preferences suggested that the latter strongly depended on the perceived healthiness of the food item, the price of the food item and convenience of obtaining it, its sensory appeal, the mood of the consumer as well as familiarity, and ethical concerns. Lensvelt and Steenbekkers [2] added to this list supply and demand, tradition, religious beliefs, etc., while Shouteten et al. [3] and Ghosh et al. [4] focused on sensorial, economic, cultural, and ethnic aspects. Peer pressure and socio-cultural perspectives were investigated by Menozzi et al. [5] and Tan and House [6], respectively, and disgust and neophobia in connection with Westerners' disgust for eating insects formed topics of inquiries for La Barbera et al. [7] and Castro and Chambers [8]. Although researchers could show that the name, type, and role of an insect [9] can affect a species' acceptance or rejection just like the image that an insect's name creates in the consumer does [10], none of these as well as other investigators had previously considered that a rejection of insects as food could also have a linguistic background component.

Idioms and proverbs, for example, occur in all languages and according to Casas et al. [11], constitute categories that "permeate languages at a much deeper level than what is usually taken for granted". The same authors declare that idioms exert an "overriding influence" on society and according to [12] become integrated into popular consciousness to express feelings like irritation, contemptuous attitudes, and even anger and disgust [13]. Unsurprisingly, accepting the validity of this view, idioms and proverbs might then be interpreted as "natural decoders of customs, cultural beliefs, social conventions, and norms" [14] with a profound influence on experience and behaviour [15].

Turning now specifically to idioms that incorporate references to insects and other terrestrial arthropods like spiders, it has repeatedly been shown that amongst people with Western cultural backgrounds these idioms convey predominantly negative attitudes, but that in East Asia more positive attitudes prevail [16–19]. Thus, the question arises as to whether the negative insect idioms stemmed from a genuine, deep-rooted antipathy towards insects as well as terrestrial arthropods generally or whether the negative attitude has been nurtured and strengthened by references to such idioms that are explicitly negative with regard to these invertebrates.

What seemed pertinent in connection with this question is the recent realization of so-called mirror neurons in the human brain, discovered by Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia [20]. Such neurons are implicated in the ability of an individual to understand another individual's emotion and to empathize by activating neuronal circuits, as when the receiving individual experienced the other person's emotion herself or himself directly [21]. Originally seen in connection with visual or odoriferous stimulation, mirror neurons are now also thought to play a role in adopting emotions that are expressed figuratively, i.e., in idioms, as mirror neurons are located near the Broca area of speech development in the human brain and thereby can facilitate the learning process as well as verbal communication [21]. The emotional state of the 'receiver individual' according to Bastiaansen et al. [13] comes to resemble that of the 'sending individual', especially if a facial expression of disgust [22] accompanies the utterance of a particular idiom.

The aim of this paper has been to show that idioms containing negative references to insects and other invertebrates could possibly influence a person's attitude, especially in connection with insects as a novel food item in Western countries. Therefore, this paper must not be seen as a comprehensive and detailed study on insect containing idioms and their effects on people, but is meant to serve as a 'wake-up-call' to conduct further studies into this question.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

The target subgroup of insect, spiders, and other invertebrate-related idioms were those that show a relationship to food, eating, and digestion in the widest sense. Although a variety of such idioms from different languages were investigated by us, the idioms that we have most thoroughly examined belonged predominantly to the Finnish language for three reasons: firstly, Finns have largely been a rural people living in close contact with Nature and their language is therefore particularly rich in idioms that contain references to insects; secondly, the authors' own familiarity with the language provided us with considerable insight into use and meaning of such idioms; thirdly, in agreement with other people of Western cultural backgrounds, Finns until very recently, did not consider insects and other terrestrial arthropods as edible, seeing in fact most of them as pesky and annoying creatures.

Since Finnish idioms and proverbs have been the subject of several books, the ten most relevant books [23–32] were consulted by the authors in order to locate suitable idioms, i.e., those involving insects, spiders, and other invertebrates in connection with food and eating. The idioms were discussed with a small but unspecified number of colleagues, five students of approximately 20 years of age and four elderly relatives, who contributed four additional idioms (referred to as 'other'). The research represents a qualitative study of the relevant literature but does not claim to be exhaustive. As with an earlier study on Korean insect idioms by Meyer-Rochow [19], we are presenting the idioms first in their original form, followed by their translation into English and, where deemed necessary, an explanation as to the idiom's meaning and application in parentheses. Each Finnish idiom's source, i.e., the book it was found in, is indicated at the end of each idiom. How the non-Finnish idioms were found is mentioned in connection with the language they were taken from.

#### **3. Results**

Finnish language speakers may find some of the expressions and spellings unusual, because often idioms are connected with local dialects that somewhat differ from the standard Finnish. Moreover, urbanized Finns may not recognize some of the older idioms, especially those used by rural folk.
