Φόλα = poison, especially poison laid out for stray dogs
The bane of my life. A lifelong cat-lover, I have been betrayed by both my children, who prefer dogs. My elegant daughter has an equally elegant King Charles. My son has a rough-and-tumble Belgian Shepherd cross, a bit like him! Both are beautiful animals, and I am surprised at how much I love them (the dogs, not my kids). I frequently take my son’s dog out for walks. If sniffing were a sport, he could represent Greece. My daughter is particularly nervous about φόλα, a fear she has successfully transmitted to me.
Of course, it is illegal. It is not something you ask for in a hardware store like rat poison. It’ll be homemade, mixed with food and left out for strays. Not a humane way to treat any animal, and not a good way to conclude a morning walk with your dog lying dead on the pavement.
Φόλα also has other meanings, none of them pleasant. According to Wiktionary, it can also mean ‘bait’ or a ‘lie’, a cinematic or theatrical flop, an ugly woman. Finally, it can mean a ‘repair patch’ e.g a piece of rubber to repair an inner tube or a piece of leather to cover a hole or tear on a leather garment. I wonder if the leather patches that men used to have on the elbows of their jacket sleeves could be described as φόλες. In my memory those were leather on tweed, while ένα κομμάτι φόλα should be of the same material as the thing it is meant to repair.
Finally, I always like to dip into www.slang.gr to see if a word has an extended or slang meaning. More often than not, you also get additional information. For example, from the extract below I learned that γαύρος – the humble whitebait or anchovy – also means an Olympic Piraeus supporter. It seems that 40 or 50 years ago, when the Piraeus team showed up to play Panathenaikos, they were taunted by fans with cases of whitebait. Anyway, according to www.slang.gr φόλα can also be used as an adjectival or adverbial intensifier:
Τι λέει, θα πάμε αύριο να δούμε την Πανάθα Champions League; Να πεις και στον Φώτη άμα είναι. = Hey, let’s go and see Panathenaikos in the Champions League tomorrow. And why don’t you ask Fotis if he’s up for it?
Ρε την παλεύεις; Δεν σου έχω ξαναπεί ότι ο Φώτης είναι φόλα γαύρος; = You can try, but haven’t I told you before that Fotis is a diehard Olympiacos supporter?