tintinnabulation = the act or an instance of the ringing or pealing of bells. From Latin tintinnāre to tinkle, from tinnīre to ring.

Related words
tintinnabulte = to ring, to tinkle
tintinnabulary = a bellringer
tintinnabulum = a small high-pitched bell
tinnitus = medical term for a ringing or buzzing in the ears

I came across this word on World Wide Words today and it really appeals to me as a pleasant-sounding word and as a fine example of onomatopoeia. Another onomatopoeic term for the ringing of bells in ding dong, in both English and French. The French for tintinnabulation is tintinnabulement, the Spanish is campanilleo, and the German is Klingeln.

What sounds do bells make in other languages?

English contains more foreign loan words than you can shake a stick at. In some cases both their singular and plural forms have been adopted, but sometimes only one of these forms makes it into English. For example, panini is the plural of panino, an Italian-style sandwich, but only the former is normally used in English – the plural paninis is quite common. In Italian the plural of pizza is pizze, but in English we say pizzas.

Some, though not all, of the unusual plural forms are regularised. Examples include, stadium, the plural of which is either stadia, or more commonly, stadiums. Formula, which can be pluralised as either formulae or formulas. Also kibbutz – kibbutzim/kibbutzes; octopus – octopi/octopuses; hippopotamus – hippopotami/hippopotamuses; index – indices/indexes; matrix – matrices/matrixes.

A few years ago I went to Sicily for a holiday. On arrival in Catania I felt a bit peckish so went to get something to eat at an airport café. In some Italian cafés you have to pay first, then you take the receipt to the food counter and pick up your food. I asked the guy behind the cash register for ‘uno panini‘, thinking I was asking for one sandwich. As I used the plural form (I’d forgetten the singular), he thought I was asking for two and charged me accordingly. I was quite surprised when the food counter guy handed me two sandwiches, but didn’t mind too much as I was very hungry by then.

Here’s a plural-related conundrum (plural conundra/conundrums) for you: the plural of child is children, the plural of ox is oxen. Can you think of any other English words with the same type of plural?

This week I’m on holiday and spending most of it with my parents in the wilds of Lancashire in the northwest of England. Yesterday, while waiting for a train, I heard an announcement about a different train being ‘replatformed’. This word caught my attention because it sounded quite strange, and even though I’d never heard before, I knew exactly what it meant.

Have you heard any strange new words recently?

Words are notoriously slippery customers. They might start life with one or two well-defined meanings, but they often take on additional meanings, and in some cases come to mean the opposite of what they meant originally. This process is referred to as “accelerating fuzziness” by Geoffry Finch in Word of Mouth – A New Introduction to Language and Communication, an interesting book I’m reading at the moment.

Here’s probably the best-known example of an English word that’s undergone accelerated fuzziness:

Nice, which originally meant foolish, currently means pleasant, commendable, kind, friendly, good, satisfactory, subtle, delicate, discrimminating, precise or skillful, is sometimes used to mean fastidious or respectable, and used to mean delicate, shy, modest or wanton. That’s a lot of meanings for such a small word! This is a word I was discouraged from using in English lessons. According to my teacher, nice is far too imprecise because it can mean so many different things. Sometimes there’s no harm in a bit of imprecision though, particularly when asked to give your opinion on something about which you don’t feel strongly either way.

Nice comes from the Old French nice (simple, silly), from Latin nescius (ignorant), from nescīre (to be ignorant).

On an unrelated matter, what non-English-speaking photographers ask people to say when taking a photo? English-speaking photographers often ask people to say “cheese!”, a word that makes you smile when you say it, thanks to the ee sound. What about in other languages?