Category: Etymology

Bead houses

By Simon

There’s a village near where I live called Betws-y-Coed [ˈbɛtʊs ə ˈkɔɨd], which means ‘prayer house in the wood’. I knew the meaning of the name, but hadn’t considered where the word betws might come from. Last night a friend told me that it comes from an English word ‘bead house’, meaning a prayer house or oratory.

Wikipedia agress with this saying the word Betws or Bettws comes from the Old English bed-hus (house of prayer, oratory). The name was first recorded as ‘Betus’ in 1254.

According to this Old English Dictionary the Old English word bed means ‘prayer, supplication; religious ordinance, service’, hús means ‘house; temple, tabernacle; dwelling-place; inn; household; family, race’, and gebédhús is a house of prayer or oratory.

Apparently the Welsh words bacws (bakery) and warws (warehouse) contain the same hús root. I can’t find confirmation of this, but it sounds plausible. I guessed that these words came from English, but hadn’t made the connection with Betws before.

They must have been borrowed before the Great Vowel Shift which started during the 14th century. Before then house or hús was pronounced /hu:s/, as it still is in northern English and Scots. The /haus/ pronunciation emerged during the 18th century.

Cuddies

By Simon

An interesting Scots word I came across this week was cuddy which means coalfish or donkey and featured in the English translation of a Gaelic song. From the context I knew it was some kind of creature, but which one I wasn’t sure.

According to the Scots Language Centre website cuddy is a Scots word meaning donkey, a foolish person, a saw horse or a vaulting horse. A Scotch cuddy is a pedlar.

Another word that came up that was new to me was gaberlunzie /ɡæbərˈlʌnji/, an old Scots word for a licensed beggar who would seek fees to pray for the souls of other people [source].

Have you come across these words before?

Menhirs, dolmens and cromlechs

By Simon

A menhir from Brittany and a cromleac from Ireland

The word menhir come up in discussion yesterday and I posted it on Facebook today along with the the Welsh translation maen hir, which is what I found in this dictionary. This provoked further discussion about whether the two terms mean the same thing. So I thought I’d find out.

A menhir is a standing stone of the kind that Obelix delivers in the Asterix books. According to the Dictionary of Word Origins and the OED, menhir comes from Breton mean-hir (long stone), which is what the Welsh term maen hir means, so it seems that they are the same. The usual Breton word for such standing stones is peulvan, however.

The word dolmen (a prehistoric structure of two or more upright stones surmounted by a horizontal one), comes via French from Breton: the men part means stone, and the dol part either comes from the Breton word tōl (table), a borrowing from the Latin tabula (board, plank), or from the Cornish tol (hole). So dolmen either means ‘stone table’ or ‘stone hole’.

The word dolmen also exists in Welsh, and another word for such structures is cromlech, which exists in Welsh and English and comes from the Welsh words crwm (bent, stooped) and llech (stone), and is related to the Irish word cromleac (‘bent stone’).

Cars, carts and chariots

By Simon

Last week I was told that the English word car originally comes from the Irish word carr (donkey cart). Apparently when cars came to Ireland Irish speakers thought it was better to come up with a new word for them than to name them after the humble donkey cart, so the term gluaisteán (‘moving thing’) was coined. I hadn’t heard about this before so thought I’d check it.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the English word car has been used to refer to a wheeled vehicle since 1300 and comes from the Old Northern French word carre, from the Latin carrum/carrus, which originally referred to a two-wheeled Celtic war chariot, from the Gaulish word karros, from the Proto-Indo-European word *krsos, from the root *kers- (to run).

There are related words in Welsh carr (cart, wagon), and in Breton: karr (chariot, cart), in Cornish: karr (car), in Manx: carr (car), in Spanish and Italian: carro (cart, wagon) and probably in other languages.

The word chariot comes from the same root as car, but cart probably comes from the Old Norse word kart-r (cart), according to the OED.

Another vehicle-related word we discussed last week is carbad (chariot), from the Old Irish carpat (war-chariot, waggon). It is related to the Welsh cerbyd (vehicle, car, carriage, coach), the Old Breton cerpit, the Gaulish carpentoracte, from the Latin corbis (basket), from carpentum (two wheeled chariot), which was probably borrowed from Gaulish. The root idea is ‘wicker’, referring to the basket character of the body of these chariots.

It’s blowing a hoolie

By Simon

Yesterday I spotted the interesting expression ‘it’s blowing a hoolie‘ on a friend’s facebook page. From the context I guessed it meant that it was very windy.

According to A Way with Words, to blow a hoolie means ‘(of weather) to storm; to forcefully gust, blow, and rain.’ It is perhaps connected to hooley, which is defined by Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang as “a rip-roaring party” and comes from Ireland.

The OED suggests that hoolie /hu(:)li/ comes from the Orkney Scots word hoolan (strong gale), from an unattested Norn form of the Old Icelandic ýlun (howling, wailing).

Have you come accross this expression before, or do you use it? Do you have any other expressions for describing windy, stormy weather?

True sisters

By Simon

The word for sister in Irish is deirfiúr /dʲɾʲəˈfˠuːɾˠ/, and it has always puzzled me why this word is so different from the words for sister in the other Gaelic languages: piuthar /pju.ər/ in Scottish Gaelic and shuyr /ʃuːr/ in Manx.

Yesterday I discovered that deirfiúr is in fact a combination of deirbh /dʲɾʲəv/ (true) and siúr /ʃuːɾˠ/ (sister). The word siúr originally meant sister in Old Irish, but came to mean kinswoman. To distinguish sisters from other female relations, deirb (true) was added to it, so the Old Irish word for sister was derbṡiur, which eventually became the Modern Irish deirfiúr – the s at the beginning of siur became f after mo (my), do (your) and a (his), and this mutation became fixed.

In Scottish Gaelic the word for sister came from Old Irish as fiur, which became piur and eventually piuthar.

The Old Irish word siur (sister) comes from the Proto-Celtic *swesūr, from the Proto-Indo-European *swésōr, which is the root for the word for sister in many European languages.

The Irish word for brother, deartháir /dʲɾʲəˈhaːɾʲ/, has a similar history: it is a combination of deirbh (true) and bráthair (brother) and used to be written dearbh-bhráthair or dearbhráthair. It comes from the Old Irish derbráthair, from the Proto-Celtic *brātīr, from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰréh₂tēr. In Modern Irish bráthair means brother as in a male member of a religious community or monk. In Old Irish it meant brother, kinsman or cousin.

Sources: Blas na Gàidhlig: The Practical Guide to Scottish Gaelic Pronunciation, by Michael Bauer
and Wiktionary

Press

By Simon

One word for cupboard used mainly in Hiberno and Scottish English is press. When I encountered it in one of my Irish courses as a translation of the Irish word prios it puzzled me somewhat as I’d never come across this word used to mean cupboard before. Today I spotted the term linen press in a book I’m reading and thought I’d find out more about this word.

According to the OED, a press is a large cupboard, usually with shelves, especially one that lives in a wall recess, and is used to store such things as linen, clothes, books, crockery and other kitchen item. It is sometimes referred to as a clothes-press or linen-press. It comes from the French word presse, which originally referred to a crowd or crush in battle, and by the 14th century also meant a clothes cupboard.

Do you call cupboards presses, or have you heard anybody doing so?

Le trac

By Simon

An interesting French word I discovered the other day is trac /tʁak/, which means nerves, stage fright or performance anxiety. Some expressions incoporating this word include:

– avoir le trac = to feel nervous; to get an attack of nerves; to have stage fright
– j’ai le trac = I’m nervous; I have butterflies in my stomach*; I have the jitters
– tout à trac = out of the blue

*If people have butterflies in their stomachs when feeling nervous, what do butterflies have?

This word first appeared in writing in 1830 and it’s origins are uncertain. It perhaps comes from the word tracas (anxiety).

Sources: Reverso, Linternaute, CNRTL.

What expressions do you use to describe being nervous or anxious?

Do you suffer from stage-fright / performance anxiety?

I used to be get very nervous when I had to speak or sing in front of others, but now only get nervous before and afterwards – while I’m speaking, singing or playing an instrument I feel calm and enjoy it.

Gendarmes et policiers

By Simon

Yesterday there was some discussion of the police at the French Conversation Group – one of the members is a former policeman. We use the word policier, but later I remembered that another French word for policeman is gendarme, and it suddenly dawned on me that gendarme probably comes from gens d’armes (armed man). I checked this today and it’s right. It’s not something I’ve really thought about before, but when I did think about it, it seemed so obvious. Do you find that with words sometimes?

According to Reverso, French country police officers are called les gendarmes, but those in towns are called les agents de police or les policiers. A community police officer is un îlotier and a traffic police officer is un agent de la circulation.

According to the OED and the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word police comes from the Middle French police (public order, administration, government), from the Latin polītīa (citizenship, political organization, government), which is also the root of policy, politics, politican, etc. and comes from the Ancient Greek πολιτεία (politeia – citizenship, government, administration) from πολίτης (polites – citizen) from πολίς (polis – city, state), from the Proto-Indo-European *p(o)lH- (enclosed space, often on high ground).

Baguette de tambour

By Simon

Les baguettes de tambour, de http://francais.istockphoto.com/illustration-16429730-tambour-jouet-baguette-tambour-un-seul-objet-instrument-musique.php

Yesterday I discovered that in French a drumstick is a baguette de tambour, which conjured up images of French drummers playing their drums with long loaves of bread.

The word baguette comes from the Italian word bacchetta (little rod), a diminutive of bacchio (rod), from the Latin baculum (stick, staff). As well as meaning a type of French bread, it can also refer to “a small moulding of semicircular section” and “a gem, ususually a diamond, cut in a long rectangular shape” [Source: OED].

The French word tambour, which is also found in English and means a frame used in embroidery or a drum, comes from the Persian word tabῑr or from the Arabic word ṭubūl, which both mean ‘drum’. The word tambourine comes from the same root, as does timbre [source].

Some more drum-related French vocabulary:

– le tambour = drum
– la batterie = drum kit / drums
– Je joue de la batterie = I play the drums
– tambouriner = to drum
– pianoter / tambouriner sur la table = to drum one’s fingers on the table
– le tambourin = tambourine
– le (joueur de) tambour = drummer
– batteur (-euse) = drummer (in rock/jazz band)
– le roulement de tambour = drum roll
– la caisse claire = side/snare drum
– la grosse caisse = bass drum
– la boîte à rythme = drum machine
– le tambour de frein = brake drum
– le bidon de pétrole = oil drum

Source: Reverso