Does each language have "lefty loosey righty tighty"?

The Spanish version is my favourite: la derecha oprime y la izquierda libera (the right oppresses and the left liberates)

Oh wow that one is really good :D
BASED
I'm using this in every language I speak from now on!
I had never heard that before. Is that a region or country-specific thing?
- Definitely not a common phrase. I've never heard of it (from Spain) and I just asked about 10 others from other countries and only one has. We usually would just say clockwise or counterclockwise
- Isn't everything in Spanish?
Holy shit, fucking hell, now this is some goddamn wordplay!

I’m stealing this like the fucking British Museum.
I think I saw that on reddit 2years ago, thank you for reminding me how's the actual saying (I ~have adopted ever since I saw it, lol)
¡Gracias por la lección de español de hoy!
That's awesome.

The right oppresses, the left liberates

Lmao
- Ah yes the famed spaniard mao

"La derecha oprime y la izquierda libera"

The right oppresses, the left liberates

La derecha oprime y la izquierda libera

I just knew that would be Spanish, without being able to speak more than a few words. It works far better than our effort and is both a sardonic and satirical political comment.

Well played Spanish if that really is the equivalent in common usage. Our effort sounds like it was invented by a young child whilst responding to a BBC quiz.
- I’ve never heard this, But it’s great
I love Spanish, damn that's a good way to say it.
Never heard of that. When attending a trade school there was never the necessity of a mnemotechnic to know in which direction turn the tool.

As other mentioned this kind of phrase is useless if you are in the opposite side of the thing you want to tighten/loose.

What I always heard is “la regla del destornillador” (the screwdriver rule), as a substitute for the right hand rule.
- People on the other side don't deserve a mnemonic.
We say the same thing in Brazil, but in portuguese: "A direita oprime, a esquerda liberta."

In austrian german dialect, "Mit da Ua, draht ma zua." which in standard german would be "Mit der Uhr, dreht man zu." and in english "With the clock, turn it closed." or something like that.

Neat. Would be engineering related lol
- In English, there's also "clockwise-lockwise". It makes more sense than talking about left and right.
Da scheißt di au!
Interesting. I learned it as "Wie die Ua, so gehts zua"

I never really got that one, because "left" vs "right" only works when you are looking at the top of the screw. At the bottom, left tightens, and right loosens. So the one I remember is "clockwise to close".

Edit: the image on the post is actually a good example. If I'm off the screen to the right holding the spanner, then from my perspective, "left" would tighten.

I've always thought this too. I understand clockwise/anticlockwise and the direction being defined from the top - but it's a circle - no matter which way you turn, it spends 50% of the time going either direction. The phrase works with screwdrivers (especially ratcheting ones), but not so much spanners or Hex Keys IMO.
- I always railed against this. I’m using clockwise-lockwise from now on.
Agreed. If the screw moves left or right, it fell out of its hole, lol. I guess "clockwise" is hard to rhyme.
I explained here, but that's why I prefer using the right-hand-rule. Sometimes thinking about clockwise in strange frame of references hurts my little brain.
It works for screws, but as a kid, I was never sure if the clock on the wall should be visualized attached to the ceiling or on the floor when saying "clockwise". So I was always a bit hessitant on that.
If you mime tightening a bolt, your thumb moves to the right. And vise versa.
- Left or right-handed?
- Am i weird if i tighten bolts by moving my fingers up/down intsead of side to side?

In Dutch we have DROL, Dicht recht, open links. So close right, open left as a very strict translation. But DROL is also Dutch for turd.

A droll factoid.
Never heard of that, I just remembered from my dad that clockwise is tight and counterclockwise is loose.
- Same here, except for my dad, he is clumsy as hell.
Huh, I always say links los, rechts rotsvast

Edit: or, this: links verlost, rechts rekent in

Not for screwing/unscrewing but in France we have a satire mnemonic for remembering right and left:

The right hand is the one with the thumb pointing left.

Works only if you look at the back of your hands, and obviously not useful. We use it mainly to mock someone who mix right and left

In English we’ll say, “Your other <right/left>”, depending on which direction the person is messing up.
- I think that one is universal
What's the phrase in French?
- La main droite, c'est celle qui a le pouce à gauche
- Not sure about the thumb one but for screws with only have:
  
  Visser : sens des aiguilles d’une montre (clockwise)
  
  Dévisser : sens contraire des aiguilles d’une montre (anti clockwise)
We got that one in Germany as well
Dad? Is that you ?
Are there lots of French who can't easily tell left from right? I feel like one of the few sad Americans who can't. Would love to know why. I always chalked it up to a lack of coordination.
- I'd say as many as in other countries

I'm Norwegian. I never learned a rule in my language and always just went by instinct. Until ~3rd year of university in physics where someone told me tha the right-hand-rule applies to screws. Now I use that everywhere for screws in strange positions.

Well, this was a life-changing comment.
Can you elaborate? I googled the right hand rule, but I'm not seeing how it applies to screws.
- Grab around a screw with your right hand and extend your thumb (like a thumbs up). Then rotating the screw in the direction which your fingers are pointing will result in the screw moving in the direction your thumb is pointing.
  
  Thumbs up for lifting the screw upwards, thumbs down for screwing the screw downwards. And you can move your hand around to figure out screwing directions for any tricky spots.
- Right hand rule applied to torque.
I'm indian and learns right hand screw rule in high school physics
I've heard the right hand rule regarding magnetism and current direction (because it's useful to illustrate correlation between vectors), but never about screws. Now that I think of it, it makes perfect sense there too, only that you have to imagine a thumb pointing down most of the time...

You know this has always confused the fuck out of me. You are going around a circle, how is there left and right? There is up-and-left, down-and-left, either way is left. If I am starting on the right of the circle (assuming I'm looking at it) which way is right? Up or down?

Imagine it like a car steering wheel.

You'd say turning the wheel to the right turns the car right.

Think of it like this. Like your hand is holding on the top of the steering wheel.
- ok but what is behind this picture? I see fur and old matted flesh? a paw with no nails or an old dogs snout?!?!
The starting point is on the top.
Clockwise = Righty

Or imagine a bottle cap instead of a screw... Muscle memory kicks in.
- Thank you! Clockwise looking down at a bottlecap makes sense!
This has always annoyed me too. I know why it works, but it's clockwise and counter-(or anti-)clockwise. If you were turning from the bottom, left and right are mixed up. Maybe it's just too hard to come up with a phrase using those terms?
- Clockwise=lockwise
I always think about the direction that the top of the circle turns to apply left or right rotation, though I usually use muscle memory.
If it was a wheel, which way would it roll if you turned it like that?
It's the top part. So if you imagine a little dot at the top (12h) position it would move to the right/clockwise or left/anti-clockwise
- Yeah, but once you get one quarter of a rotation through your dot is now moving left.
Use right hand thumb rule. There is no right, there is no left, there is no clockwise or anticlockwise. All of them depend on the way you looks. Rught hand thumb rule fixes it for humans

The German version as actually survived its original time frame: "So lang das Deutsche Reich besteht, wird Schraube fest nach rechts gedreht" - "As long as the German Reich exists, a screw is tightened by turning right"

yeah, this one is only for inside voice. I won't be teaching it to anyone anymore.
I'm German, and I've never heard that before. I'd be seriously weirded out by someone saying that or teaching it to their kids
- I have to admit that this is rather old. So old, in fact, that it does not refer to the Third Reich but the Kaiserreich.
So ... shouldn't German screws now turn to the left?
- See!!! This is why communism is bad!! Since you’ve started turning everything to the left, it’s all come apart!!
- Nar. A statement and its converse are not equivalent.
Never heard of this. We say 'auf links, rechts zu' and simply order the words alphabetically

Solang das Deutsche Reich besteht, wird die Schraube rechts gedreht.

That's a lot of extra words for lefty loosey, righty tighty.
And how are we supposed to turn screws nowadays?
- Your screwdriver subscription has expired.
  
  Please renew your subscription today!
- I guess we're screwed

The Right Hand Rule (RHR). Point the thumb of your right hand in the direction you want something to go. Curl your fingers. That is the direction of rotation. Translate to any language which has hands.

I guess I'm an idiot because I don't understand lmao
- Your thumb is an arrow pointing at where you want the screw to go. After you curl your fingers, your fingers are arrows showing the direction to turn the screw
I know how to turn a wrench. Knowing the direction is the difficult part. Especially on toilets.
The only thing I don't like about this is the implication of a left hand rule for left hand threads, which makes my E&M physics brain sad
- Multliply bu -1. Same as with negative charge

This phrase has never made any sense to me. It’s a circle. If one side is moving right, then the opposite side is moving left. So the phrase only makes sense if you specify which side we are talking about, which nobody ever does. Therefore it’s completely illogical to me while everyone else just gets it. Side note: Autism can be a real bitch sometimes.

Edit:

Some people don’t understand how I can see a problem. That’s cool, but don’t be a dick. We all look at the world through different lenses.
This is when I was a kid “helping” my grandfather in the garage. I’m older now and understand that “righty tighty” references the top of the rotation.
Some people rotate their perspective 90° and imagine themselves standing on the screw. Therefore when your face rotates to the right the screw is tightened. I hadn’t ever thought of that. But I had imagined rotating my perspective 90° the other direction –the top of my head as a screwdriver. In that case, “lefty tighty”

Clockwise and counterclockwise may be more intuitive for some people. Is the clock-hand (wrench) going forward in time, or backwards. But I don't know of any quick rhyme for that
- Yes, that verbiage makes way more sense.
If you're looking head on to the screw/nut/whatever then we're talking about the top of the screw/but/whatever.

You can also imagine if the nut was actually a wheel. Which way would you spin it to make it roll left or right.

Confused the hell out of me at a young age. That's how I came around to thinking of it
Don't think about it in 3d space.
- They mean is the wrench handle moving left from the 12 o'clock position or left from the 6 o'clock position. You would not believe how many people struggle with lefty righty because of start location.
  
  I defer to clockwise and counter-clockwise (anti-clockwise in UK). Except for new gen that never learned analog clock stuggles with this concept also.
  
  Then they encounter a Left Hand thread and the universe implodes
- I love how half the people in this thread are under-thinking it and don't seem to understand they're doing so. I wonder whether it's a bit.
- I assure you I’m only thinking of it in two dimensions.
- So where do you put the rest of your helices on a cylinder or cone, in 2D? In Flatland a screw or bolt becomes a circle with a short hair. The whole point of "leftie loosy" is to try to help with reality as we perceive it.
  
  Try it the next time you are underneath a car wielding a socket spanner with a taped on extension thingie that you jury rigged whilst trying to shift a hex nut at 45 degrees to reality that you cannot see, with oil dripping in your eye. Obviously the oil is a mix of the 30 year old native stuff loosened up with the WD40 that might break the rust lock.
  
  I suggest you do think abut things in 3D and don't forget the other dimension (time). That WD40 needs time to break the rust lock.
  
  "Leftie loosy" isn't for keyboard worriers - its for engineers and technicians, plumbers, and the rest and obviously for DiYers.
  
  When you are knackered and pissed off and you need to shift a fucking nut or bolt or whatever, you need incantations to get you back on track.
I agree but there is a intuitive way once you are holding it. I remember looking at a car wheel and the signal lever not understanding how do people decided that up on the lever means right. Yeah it's connected to the wheel rotation but why turning the wheel clockwise means turning right? When I actually sat on the driver seat there was an instinct.For most people It's more logical to look at the "top" of the circle and corelate it's movement with turning left/right.

A thing that annoyed me is when table top games use a non determinist way to define player order. It always depends on the observer.alIf you just say "then the you pass your turn to the left", what left? From my perspective; from the top down perspective translating it to counterclockwise? From the tables perspective which is the opposite?
If it were a wheel which way would it roll?
I used to feel the same way. If you're talking about the direction you're moving your hand, it assumes your hand is above, not below.

Had a similar hangup with less than/greater than symbols.
I remember when my grandpa was like why not just keep going? I was pulling the ratchet end of the wrench off the bolt at the bottom.. I said but that side is left and he laughed and said its just to get you started and told me the clock thing. Dont ever ask me to put a nut on a bolt I will cross thread it every time.
SAME!

Even "clockwise/counter-clockwise" is a bit vague if you're not both on the same side of the thing, since something turning clockwise from one perspective turns counter seen from the opposite side.
They are not a circle unless you have some really odd bolts or screws! I suppose a bolt looks like a circle in "Flatland" but we live in 3D space with time as a fourth dimension that we can directly perceive.

A screw or bolt and the rest are, roughly speaking, a cylinder with a helical thread on it. They also have a "head" or similar which acts a stopper. You can model all of them as a bolt. We use a spanner, wrench, fingers, screw drivers, drill drivers, scissors, whatever to do the tightening or loosening. You can model all those tools as a spanner (wrench). We need some final mental contortions to make this slightly rigorous: The spanner (wrench) is always considered as being at 12:00 on an imaginary clock and we have to assume that our bolt moves away from us for "tighten" and towards us for "loosen" and I suppose we should also require that we are looking at the "face" of the notional clock and not its obverse!

Now it should be obvious how the rule works. Turn the spanner to the right and you tighten the bolt, turn it to the left and you loosen it.

OK that lot is not very helpful when you are under a sink or in a roofing void performing strange contortions. Try holding up one of your hands and pretend you are holding a bolt or the head of a screw. Clockwise turns will tighten and anti clockwise will loosen. You might use "leftie loosey ..." to bootstrap: "clockwise tighten". It becomes even more interesting when you are trying to work out which way to turn a bolt or whatever when you can only feel it and when tightening actually moves it towards you.

Think about a bolt running through a wheel with the head towards us, say on a very simplified bicycle. Move the bike to the right, and hence the wheels turn clockwise. Friction should cause the bolt to tighten. If you change the design and put the bolt in on the other side and now forwards for the bike is to the left then you will loosen the bolt and that will be dangerous. Now change the design to a bolt with a nut and washers etc and it rapidly gets complicated!

Also, please note that some bolts have reverse threads to the norm. On a garden strimmer the tightening knob that holds the spool on is often a reverse threaded bolt. That's for similar reasons to the bicycle wheel thing I mentioned earlier.

I've just spent ages and a lot of words to try and persuade you that this has bugger all to do with autism. I think that your error was really to do with not thinking too deeply about the real issue and focusing on the wrong thing. We all do that, extremely often, regardless of where we are on the spectrum.

I hope that you see that considerations with regarding helical threads on a cylinder or a tapering cone (but not circles) can be quite complicated and that's why sometimes we all need some silly rules to get us through the every day ordeal of dealing with them.

Now, would you like a chat about circles ... 8)

Finnish doesn't have one. We just learn it by instinct and use the time saved to warm up the sauna.

Same for Denmark. Except instead of warming up the sauna, it creates time for another Tuborg.
Or we pretend to be opening a Koskenkorva bottle in whatever orientation the bolt is in.
- with proper application of sisu, it will open in both directions
"warm up the sauna"

I get slapped when I try that sort of thing on with Sauna.

A nice thought until you run into a left handed thread........

It's works most of them time unless you're in a specialty trade making spindle, gears, and such that must be threaded backwards to avoid the wheel undoing itself.
- Or you work with gas cylinders.
  
  I don't understand this one, please Airgas
- Yep, 80% of the time it works every time!
  
  The point is, if you fix things, you WILL run into left handed threads at some point. I've found them in washers, vacuums, blenders, bikes, and cars. Left handed threads aren't the most common thing, but they are out there waiting to screw with your mind and ruin your day.......
And you feel so incredibly dense every time you run into it and you can't figure out what's going on. The crank on my kids bike was out of whack the other week and I kept tightening it down and it kept coming back loose. I was turning the crank one way to tighten it which was pushing it against the lock nut but it needed to turn the other way to be pushed against the bearing before I tighten the lock nut down. If it was all right-handed it would have been clear what I was doing.
- ... and you hope you don't forget until the next time you have to do it...
- Spindles and shafting are places you can find left handed threads. And it depends on the direction of rotation like that bike crank. Can't have things coming lose due to the way bike cranks turn, so they a left handed thread to stay tight.
  
  It took me a long to time learn that when dealing with such things that I need to stop, look, and think about how things are assembled and why.
Or when you're screwing in a screw from behind/under something while lying upside down using a ratchet with an angled extender and you aren't sure which way is actually left/right where the screw is.
- Got that tee shirt too!

I'm from back in the generation when we had volume knobs.

My dad told me turn the volume up to tighten it, turn it down to loosen it.

I've never had a problem.

"Lefty Loosey righty tighty"

One arrow points up to the left, one points down to the left.

It's about direction of rotation, does the wrench turn left or turn right, there isn't the same notion of up and down / in and out because that portion happens when the bolt or nut turns. Also, anything rotation is moving the opposite direction on the other side of the rotation, so if you have to tighten a screw that turns towards you it's the opposite

It depends which bicycle pedal you're screwing in. They have opposite threads, designed where they're self tightening on each side.

Same with gas regulators that attach to the cylinders, for some reason. Oo and some hub nuts on cars
- I've heard flammable gas uses reverse (left hand) thread to prevent cross connection. At least for welding gases in NZ; not sure about natural gas.
Exactly! Bicycle pedals have a left-hand thread on the left-hand side and "normal" threads on the right-hand side.
If I remember correctly, old timey glass kerosene lanterns also have backwards threads for some reason
- Gas threads and water threads are opposites to each other for safety reasons. Might be part of that thought.
Bottlescrews and turnbuckles both have one end threaded in each direction.
Please tell Tongshen, who manufactures the popular TSDZ2 motor. The pedal keeps coming loose because they don't do this. I keep a key on me to tighten it when it starts to loosen.
- Oof, that's some piss poor engineering right there.
Deleted

The only one I know of is "open counter clockwise", but after consuming too much media in English I use "righty tighty...".

I use "Clock-in, counter-out"

I can't think of an equivalent phrase in Bulgarian for that, but it's known that [most] threads tighten when turning clockwise... and if you don't know what direction the clock goes, what are you even doing with screws or bolts...

And again there are special cases even outside of threads - for example in plumbing there are some valves that are open when the handle is parallel to the pipe and closed when the handle is perpendicular - and it might just happen that the closing motion happens counterclockwise.

reverse threads are also found on things like bicycles and cars which have parts that spin counter clockwise
- Yep, I'm familiar with those - on almost any bycicle the left pedal would tighten to the crank counterclockwise.
- Made me feel like I was crazy the first time I installed pedals on a bike.

We have: "Nach fest kommt ab"

The phrase "Nach fest kommt ab" is a German saying that translates to "After tight comes off" in English. It's typically used to describe the idea that if you tighten something too much (like a screw), it will eventually break or come loose. It’s often used to remind people to not overdo things.

Yes, but that phrase does not tell you in which direction you have to turn to tighten it. So it doesn't really answer the question?
- There’s the fun police again
- If the unscrewing is over done it is off, too. Fits both directions.
... nach ab kommt Arbeit

... after off work follows

Nope. Polish doesn't have one.

Neither does Czech.
- Neither does Russian. We only share right-hand rule from physics.

We have that in Gujarati "navde nokhu satde sajjad"

Google translated it as "Nine days and seven days are tight".

Does that sound like a good translation to you?
- No it's more like "lose like nine and tight like seven". It works because of the way Gujarati numerals are structured.

Gas valves famously use the opposite direction

Propane, but I'm pretty sure natural gas uses regular NPT.

DROL: Dicht Rechts, Open Links.

I think I just prefer Links Los, which implies that the other way tightens.

Dutch, BTW.

I don't think we have a Swedish one. But we call clockwise "medsols" and counterclockwise "motsols". Meaning "with the sun" or "against the sun" Does everyone have reversed threads on plumbing or is that a Nordic/Swedish thing? All plumbing has the reversed rule, left tightens and right loosens.

The reversed rule in plumbing is only for gas lines in the Netherlands.
In the plumbing sector, left-hand threads are used whenever two pipe ends need to be connected that cannot be rotated. The connector is then equipped with a left-hand and right-hand thread and can therefore easily be screwed between them.

So it's not just typical for Nordic countries, but depends on the application.
- I could give you an example. In my kitchen we have a faucet with a detachable aerator. We detach it when we want to use a attachment for a garden hose. When attaching the aerator or the garden hose attachment, the threads are reversed. I might be wrong, but two opposing threads shouldn't be able to screw into one another right?
Whut. Chaged my bathroom sink not long ago and it definitely loosens to the left/counter clock. Norway.
Let's start saying "rajtan-tajtan" as some weird anglicism?
- Hahaha thats brilliant
In finnish also same but just replace sun with day. No idea about plumbing though.

"Eins og kókflaska" or "Same as a Coca Cola bottle", not universal in Iceland though

Uuuh, upwards? :D
- Just like the screws ;D

If japanese has one, I've never heard it. Japanese wife hasn't either. She was surprised it's a thing. She said maybe tradesmen might, but certainly nothing everyone knows

So when someone changes a light bulb, which direction to turn is just a feeling in their bones?

That's fair.
- Japanese usually just say 時計回り (clockwise) or counter-clockwise
saidaybe?
- Yugunnabethawunthatsavemeee
- Probably a typo of "said maybe"
- You're gonna be the one that saves meeee

I remember it as right hand screw rule

Gas pipes. All gas fittings are reversed threaded. So it is virtually impossible to connect one to the other.

One mnemonic is to imagine yourself opening a jar.

Your door is a jar.
- Is it a jar of jam or jelly?
- One mnemonic is imagining yourself opening a door.
I use the right hand rule - ball up your fist with your thumb sticking out, and turning in the direction of your fingers curling will result in the screw going the rest your thumb points.
- Right hand for right-handed threads and left hand for left-handed. If unsure, it’s most likely right-handed.
- Me learning this about electromagnetism: huh, neat.
  
  Me learning this about something I actually use in day to day life: 🤯

Probably a result of turning wrenches since I was first able, but that rule, to me, feels akin to "up the stairs take you up, down the stairs take you down".

Filing your staircase mnemonic in my mind right next to this banger for the Great Lakes.

Never heard it in Polish but we generally don't need a mnemonic to remember which side is left and which is right (except in politics).

Definitely nothing in Arabic AFAIK.

Not aware of one in German.

We used to have one: "Solang das deutsche Reich besteht wird jede Schraube rechts gedreht." ("As long as the German Empire persists every screw is turned right.")

Given that the German Empire failed spectacularly, this sentence isn't very popular anymore.
- I know it as "Seitdem das Deutsche Reich besteht wird die Schraube rechts gedreht" ("Since the German Reich was founded, the screw has been turned to the right"), I always assumed it was because many things were standardized between the German states after unification and that this was one of these things, but I can't find any reference to that.
- I have never heard that before this thread, possibly because I was born in Austria decades after the name "Deutsches Reich" was abolished.
But we have: nach fest kommt ab!

Which translates like: after tight comes off
- This one...makes no sense to me. What is that supposed to mean (or how does it relate to the original expression)?
  
  Is it some comment about how sometimes it's hard to get something started, but eventually you'll get the result you were looking for, or something?

I think it's fairly parochial, and sounds quite infantile to me. Growing up (uk) we just used clockwise to tighten.

Have a chat with some plumbers, builders, chippies, sparkys or engineers - assuming you are not one already. I think "leftie loosey ..." is well known in the UK.
It doesn't even bloody work, lefty tighty righty loosy is every bit as valid if the spanner is at the bottom.
- Apple: User - you are holding it wrong!
  
  The spanner is always at 12 o'clock. Either turn yourself or the spanner or your point of view to make it so and then the rule holds. The last option require imagination.
  
  Take the piss after you have tried to thread a nut on a bolt that you cannot see and tightening it is towards you, at an angle. The nut has to cross a hack sawed thread and will try to cross thread 75% of the time unless the moon is in Venus.

The odd left-threaded screws are called Linksgewinde in German. Knowing this, you can sort of figure the rest out.

Aren't left handed threads used when there is torque or rotation that would cause nuts on right handed threads to loosen?
- Yes. Bicycle pedals for instance.

Not really a mnemonic in German, but I once learned how to remember of the moon was in first or third quarter by comparing the form of the crescent with the Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift cursive letters "a" (abnehmender Mond, first quarter crescent) and "z" (zinehmender Mond, third quarter crescent). The same applies to screws watching from the top, cursive "a" is for "auf" (open) and "z" for zu (close). By reading the comments, this is somewhat the closest you get to your mnemonic.