Moider

Last night I heard the word moider for the first time and was slightly puzzled by what it meant. From the context – a friend was talking about moidering around with his mates – I guessed it meant to mess/muck about, and I wondered whether it’s related to the word mither, which is used in Cheshire, Lancashire and perhaps elsewhere and means ‘to bother’, e.g. stop mithering me!.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, mither /ˈmʌɪðə/ is a dialect word, used mainly in Northern English meaning:

1. to make a fuss; moan: oh men — don’t they mither?
2. to pester or irritate (someone).

Etymology: dates from late 17th century and is of unknown origin; perhaps related to the Welsh moedrodd (to worry, bother). Other possibile origins are the Welsh words meidda (to beg for whey) or meiddio (to dare) [source].

I can’t find any other references to moedrodd, but Y Geiriadur Mawr has mwydro, and variants moedro and moidro, which mean ‘to bewilder’.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines moider as ‘to toil’.

The World English Dictionary defines moither or moider (ˈmɔɪðə, ˈmɔɪdə) as:

1. to bother or bewilder
2. to talk in a rambling or confused manner

The Century Dictionary defines moider as:

1. To confuse; perplex; distract; bewilder.
2. To spend in labor.
3. To labor hard; toil.

Have you heard of moider or mither before?

Čmeláci a včely

Photo of a honey bee

Recently I discovered that there are two different words for bee in Czech: čmelák [ˈʧmɛlaːk] (pl. čmeláci) for bumblebee and včela [ˈfʧɛla] (pl. včely) for honey bee. While investigating these words I also discovered the wonderful Czech word hmyz [ɦmɪz] (insect), which sounds like it might be onomatopoeic. This got me wondering about the differences between bumblebees and honey bees and the origins of these words.

Honey bees (apis) make and store honey, and live in large colonies in nests made from wax, while bumblebees (bombus) are bigger and hairier; make only a little honey for their young, and make much smaller nests [source 1 & source 2]. Honey bees are more likely to sting people than bumblebees, and lose their sting and die when they do so. Bumblebees are much less aggressive, very rarely sting people and don’t die when they sting [source].

The word bee can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰey-, via the Old English bēo [source], and the Czech word včela probably comes from the same root, via the Proto-Slavic *bьčela [source]. The word čmelák possibly comes from the same root as well, though I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of this.

Photo of a bumblebee

Bumblebee was known humbul-be in Middle English and this was changed to sound like the Middle English word bombeln (to boom, buzz), which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *kem (to hum) [source]. According to The Guardian though, bumblebees were known as humblebees because they hum. The name bumblebee had been around for many years and started to become more popular at the beginning of the 20th century, perhaps popularised by the name of the character Babbitty Bumble in Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse (1910).

Incidentally, a dialect word for bumblebee found in Hampshire, Cornwall and a number of other areas is dumbledore [source]. Dumbledore combines dumble, a dialect word from Southwell in Nottinghamshire meaning “a wood lined stream often in a small, steep sided valley” [source] and dore, of uncertain origin.

Metagrobolised, gruntulous noses

Yesterday I learnt the wonderful word metagrobolised on a radio show about words and language called A Way with Words, in which they discuss and answer listeners’ questions about words, idioms and language. It’s broadcast of public radio in the USA and podcasts of the show are available online. I was aware of the show before, but only got round to listening to it yesterday, mainly because they mention Omniglot on the latest one.

metagrobolised means “totally perplexed and mixed up” or “full of difficulty or confusion or bewilderment” [source]. It is also spelt metagrabolised, metagrabolized or metagrobolised. This word appears as matagrabaliser in Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of The Works of Rabelais, and was “a word forged at pleasure, which signifies the studying and writing of vain things.” Apparently the word matagraboliser first appears in Rabelais’ story Gargantua and Pantagruel and combines the Greek words μάταιος (mataios – useless), γράφω (grapho – write),
and βάλλω (ballo – to throw away), making ματαιογράφοβαλίζειν, which became matagrabaliser in French. [source].

In François Lacombe’s Dictionnaire du vieux langage françois, matagroboliser is defined as “prendre beaucoup de peine pour ne rien fair qui vaille” (to take great pains to do nothing of worth).

Other interesting words they discuss include gruntulous – to speak in a grunting fashion, and spox [spoʊks], a journalistic abbreviation of spokesperson. They also ponder why curiosity is associated with the nose – if you’re interested in other people and what they’re doing, you might be called nosy, or you are said to have a big nose, or to be sticking your nose/beak into things.

According the the Online Etymology Dictionary, nosy meant “having a prominent nose” in the 17th century, and came to mean “inquisitive by the late 19th century. The name “Nosey Parker” for an inquisitive person dates from 1907.

The word nose comes from the Old English nosu, from the Proto-Germanic *nusus, from Proto-Indo-European *nas-. From the late 16th century nose was used to mean “something obvious”, and the sense of “to pry or search” was first recorded in the 1640s, while the expression “pay through the nose” appeared in the 1670s [source].

Is the nose associated with inquisitiveness and prying into other people’s business in other languages?

Gwrthryfelwyr

The other day while listening to a news report on Radio Cymru about the situation in Libya, the word gwrthryfelwyr caught my attention. It means rebels and is made up of the elements gwrth (against, counter), ryfel, from rhyfel (war), and wyr, from gwŷr (men). I’d heard the word before and knew what it meant, but hadn’t really thought about the individual parts in this way, and this lead me to thinking that the meaning and etymology of Welsh words is often easier to work out than that of English words as many of them are made up of native roots with meanings I know or can guess.

I also thought about the etymology of the rebels and realised that it actually has a similar structure to gwrthryfelwyr, though from Latin roots. I knew that the bel part had something to do with war and appears in such Latin phrases as antebellum (before the war) and postbellum (after the war), and guessed that in this context the re- prefix might mean against. I checked this and found that rebel comes from the Old French rebelle, from the Latin rebellis (insurgent, rebellious). from rebellare (to rebel, wage war against) from re- (opposite, against or again) and bellare (wage war), from bellum (war).

The Welsh prefix gwrth- appears in many Welsh words, including:

– gwrthblaid – opposition (party) [“against/counter party”]
– gwrthbrofi – to disprove, refute [“counter prove/test”]
– gwrthdyb – paradox [“counter opinion/surmise/conjecture/notion”]
– gwrthdystio – to protest [“testify against”]
– gwrthgorffyn – antibody [“counter little body”]
– gwrthneidio – to rebound [“counter jump”]

Avoiuli

Example of the Avoiuli script

Avoiuli is a writing system used on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu which was brought to my attention today – the image on the right shows an example of the script inscribed on a stone.

Apparently Chief Viraleo Boborenvanua based the script on traditional sand drawings and spent 14 years developing it, and it is used for record keeping by the Tangbunia indigenous bank.

I’ve put together a page about this script and the language it’s used to write, Raga, but haven’t been able to find a chart showing the Avoiuli letters or any other illustrations of the script.

Do any of you know anything more about this script, or where I can find more details?

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Peithiau a maip

Recently I heard about a series of programmes on S4C (the Welsh language TV channel) presented by the naturalist Iolo Williams, in which he visits Native American communities and learns about their cultures, languages and the natural world around them. The programmes are in Welsh, apart from odd bits of English and Native American languages, and subtitles in English or Welsh are available.

In the programme I just watched, which focuses on the Lakota, Iolo uses a number of Welsh words I hadn’t heard before:

– paith (pl. peithiau) = prairie
– ci y paith (pl. cŵn y paith) = prairie dog
– meipen (pl. maip) = turnip – in this context a type of wild food found on the prairie – psoralea esculenta*
– toddi = to melt – here it is used in the context of taming wild horses

Other Welsh words for prairie include gwastatir (“level land”) and gweundir (“grass (?) land”).

The English word prairie comes from the French prairie, from the Old French praerie, from Vulgar Latin *prataria, from Latin pratum (meadow – originally “a hollow”). The existed as prayere in Middle English, but fell out of use, and then was reborrowed from French to describe the American plains, where immigrants wagons where known as “prairie schooners” [source].

*Psoralea esculenta – a herbaceous perennial plant native to prairies and dry woodlands of central North America with an edible starchy tuberous root. English names for the plant include tipsin, teepsenee, breadroot, breadroot scurf pea, pomme blanche, and prairie turnip, and the Lakota name is Timpsula [source].

Diolch i Siôn Jobbins am yr awgrym

Mizzle

On Sunday I visited Bakewell, a small town in the Peak District, with a friend. It rained on and off all day and we were trying to decide whether the rain could be described as drizzle or mizzle, a word I hadn’t heard before. Apart from a few brief heavy showers, it rained lightly most of the time – something I would describe as drizzle.

According to Weather Online:

Mizzle is a term used in Devon and Cornwall for a combination of fine drenching drizzle or extremely fine rain and thick, heavy saturating mist or fog. While floating or falling the visible particles of coarse, watery vapor might approach the form of light rain.

Etymology: from the Frisian mizzelen (drizzle)

According to the Oxford Dictionary, mizzle is mainly a dialect word meaning ‘light rain or drizzle’; or ‘to rain lightly’, and it comes from late Middle English.

The Free Dictionary defines mizzle as:

– (verb) To rain in fine, mistlike droplets; drizzle.
– (noun) A mistlike rain; a drizzle.
– (verb, British slang) To make a sudden departure

Have you come across mizzle before?