While working on the island of Guam in the early 1970s, I had regular business dealings with the expat Japanese business community — basically a good-natured crowd who were used to hearing locals mangle their language on a daily basis.
One day, while visiting the manager of a car rental agency, I was relating a shocking personal experience and felt it was not enough to just say 非常にびっくり しました (Hijō ni bikkuri shimashita, "I was really surprised"). To embellish my anecdote, however, I tried to inform my listener that, figuratively, I'd almost keeled over from a heart attack. But in mid-sentence I realized that the Japanese words for "heart" and "attack" used in combination were probably not going to work.
I was right. When I said ほとんど心臓突撃しました (Hotondo shinzō totsugeki shimashita), I had used "attack" in the military sense of an assault on the enemy.
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