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Old May 14, 2017, 07:28 PM
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aleCcowaN aleCcowaN is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Native Language: Castellano
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Thank you, but I think I failed to get its meaning through. "Cola de paja" is widely used here and it is the literal translation from Italian "coda di paglia", meaning basically "having a guilty conscience".

Translating from the Wikipedia article on the subject:

"Having a straw tail is an expression in Italian that indicates the psychological situation of those who, aware of having committed some misdeed, do not have a clear conscience and, therefore, fear being discovered and become alarmed on the least unfavourable allusions, make excuses without being accused, and react impulsively to criticisms or observations.

The probable origin of the expression goes back to the Middle Ages practice of humiliating the defeated or condemned by attaching to them a tail of straw with which they were forced to leave the city at risk of someone burning it up as a gesture of further mockery. Another possible source of the saying is related to the tale by Aesop, telling how a fox lost his tail in a bear-trap and substituted it with a prosthetic one made of straw..."
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