سنگ پا شدن

What it says

سنگ پا شدن (sang-e pâ shodan) is a colloquial Tehrani idiom that means to become shameless, indifferent to social judgment, beyond embarrassment. Literally “to become a foot-stone,” the pumice block used in Iranian bathhouses to scrub callused feet.

The literal meaning

Three pieces: سنگ (sang) stone, پا (pâ) foot, شدن (shodan) to become. The image is the old pumice block, rough and porous, that sits next to the bath drain. Feet step on it day after day. It scrapes off dead skin and gets scraped in return. After enough use it is hard, flat, callused itself, indifferent to whatever foot is on top of it. Iranians took this object and turned it into a description of a person whose social skin has gone the same way.

The figurative meaning

The person has stopped feeling embarrassment. They have been criticized so many times, or have been doing the same shameless thing for so long, that nothing reaches them anymore. They walk into rooms where they are not welcome, ask favors they should not ask, repeat behavior others would die of embarrassment over. The idiom is almost always pejorative. It is what an Iranian aunt mutters about a relative who keeps showing up uninvited, or what a friend says about a coworker who lies brazenly and feels nothing. There is also a small grudging admiration in some uses, the kind reserved for someone whose total disregard for shame has become almost a superpower.

How to use it

• دیگه سنگ پا شده، هر چی بهش بگی فایده نداره (dige sang-e pâ shode, har chi behesh begi fâyede nadâre) “He’s become shameless, whatever you tell him is useless”
• چنان سنگ پایی شده که خجالت نمی‌کشه (chenân sang-e pâyi shode ke khejâlat nemikeshe) “He’s become such a foot-stone he doesn’t feel embarrassed”
• سنگ پا نشو (sang-e pâ nasho) “Don’t become shameless” (warning to a kid)

Related expressions

The idiom sits next to a small group of shame-and-face expressions. رو دار (ru dâr) “having face” means brazen, the noun version of the same trait. خجالت سرش نمی‌شه (khejâlat sarash nemishe) “he doesn’t know shame” is the explicit version. پر رو (porru) “full-faced” is the everyday word for shameless, slightly milder than سنگ پا. آبرو (âberu) “face-water,” social honor, is the value the شخص سنگ‌پا has stopped protecting. In English the closest neighbors are “thick-skinned” (with a more negative tilt), “shameless,” and “brazen.” The Persian image is the most physical of all of them.

References

• Dehkhoda
• Vajehyab