geysilegt

Noh, bara geysimyndilegur!

"Noh" is always hard to translate, but the phrase as a whole is perhaps best rendered as Heeeyyy, he's really handsome! And yet that does quite capture it either.

The element geysi- is the same as in Geysir, the periodically erupting hot spring whose name has become the English word for all other such geysers. In Iceland they are goshverir to distinguish them from the many other burbling, steaming, splattering things dotting the landsape.

The verb underlying both geysi- and gos- is gjósa, to gush or spout. Geysir means "gusher." Gos by itself is an eruption, in Iceland often volcanic, but now also denotes a sweet carbonated beverage, soda, pop, what you will (possibly Egils appelsín but perhaps not malt, which though both sweet and lightly fizzy is still just malt, I think, drekkur í sérflokki).

Geysi- is an all-purpose intensifier. Which is to say that when Icelanders gush about something, as above, they don't do so with the verb, as in English ("Hey! He's really handsome!" she gushed), but rather just tack geysi- onto the front of all the adjectives. Then everything becomes gushingly exciting (geysispennandi), gushingly good (geysigott), gushingly handsome (geysimyndilegur).

Sometimes this incorporation of the outburst itself (gos?) into the intensifying prefix sounds to me like overpronunciation, like stage directions read aloud, or like kids enunciating comic-book sound effects, thinking they are words: paff! gisp! sukk!