Dave Bindon Sep 26, 2016:

Apple pie order Your latest query makes it seem that this is an American text. As such you need help from Americans. This 'struggling cleared out wardrobes' could be along the lines of the difference between British 'protesting against the XYZ' and the American 'protesting the XYZ'.

transphy Sep 26, 2016:

Also, 'podgy', sounds like slang. The same way as a criminal would say, ''I beat up a 'screw' (αλλοιώς 'βίδα')'', today, meaning he beat up a 'policeman'. So, somebody used 'podgy' to describe an untidy /messy amount of, in this case, socks.

transphy Sep 26, 2016:

The only sense I can make out of this is to translate 'podgy' as 'κατασκορπισμένα'. Ιt must be bad English, as further down you find the sentence, '...only on struggling cleared out wardrobes.' '...cleared...' is wrong. The correct way of saying it would be,
''I’ve spent countless rainy afternoons [only on (?)] struggling to clear out wardrobes.
That's one way of saying it correctly.
Or was he/she saying that, 'I’ve spent countless rainy afternoons only on struggling (to do something with) 'cleared out wardrobes'.

Dave Bindon Sep 25, 2016:

Yes and no I wouldn't say it's 'bad English', just a not very successful attempt at using English in an unconventional and 'creative' way. It's something which might make me smile and pause to think if I read it in poetry, but it comes across as a desperate attempt to be different in this context. It succeeds in being 'different' but doesn't, for me, succeed in conjuring up an image I can relate to.

Spyros Salimpas (asker) Sep 25, 2016:

I believe that it is just bad English.

Dave Bindon Sep 25, 2016:

Extremely strange English! Unless this is some sort of dialect I don't know, I think the author is just trying to be (overly) creative.

I'm sure you've already found that 'podgy' is, in British English, similar to παχούλης. There is no other meaning I know of. So I guess the idea the author wants to portray is an image of large heaps of clothes resembling somewhat overweight people.