Winter sports: snow, ice and the kit

On a ski, die Kante is the steel edge that bites into hard snow, and a skier who aufkantet tips the ski onto it to hold a line on ice. Away from the slope the same noun carries one of the most ordinary idioms in German: Geld auf die hohe Kante legen, to put money by. Sie legt jeden Monat etwas auf die hohe Kante means she saves a little every month, and once the money is there it stays put in the dative: Wir haben etwas auf der hohen Kante, we have some savings to fall back on. The phrase belongs to kitchen-table talk, bank adverts and the personal-finance pages alike, and it is never about a ledge or a precipice. A learner who hears it in a conversation about a holiday budget should think of a savings account, not of a ski edge; on the mountain, die Kante stays strictly literal.