Category: Words and phrases

Spread

By Simon

Imagine you’re driving through the English countryside and you get a bit lost. You might spread out a map to find out where you are, and when you reach your destination, you might decide to have a picnic, or a nice spread (meal).

After spreading out a rug, or even a bedspread, on the ground to sit on, you spread your legs a bit, then start spreading butter, cheese spread and other things on bread to make sandwiches.

After your picnic, maybe you and your companions spread out to explore the area. As you do so, you notice a farmer spreading muck on a nearby field, and another spreading seeds. You think they are growing genetically modified crops, and start spreading rumours about this. Before you know it the rumours turn into a double-page spread in the local newspaper, and you end up spreading fear and confusion.

The word spead can obviously be used in a variety of contexts and has various meanings. In French, however, there is a different word for most of these meanings:

  • étendre = to spread / open out (a towel, cloth, map)
  • écarter = to spread / strech out (arms, hands, legs)
  • étaler = to spread (butter, jam)
  • répandre = to spread (rumour, lies, fear, confusion, fertilizer)
  • propager = to spread (disease, infection)
  • disséminer = to spread (pollen, seeds)
  • échelonner = to spread (repayments)
  • répartir = to spread (wealth, workload)
  • se disperser = to spread out
  • le fromage à tartiner = cheese spread
  • le chocolat à tartiner = chocolate spread
  • une double page = a double-page spread
  • un repas = a spread (meal)
  • le couvre-lit = bedspread

Source: Reverso

Oxbows and Fossils

By Simon

On an episode of the Talk the Talk podcast that I listened to today, they discuss fossil words or, as presenter Daniel Midgely calls them, oxbows, which is a rather poetic and fitting name from them.

An oxbow lake is a part of a river that has got cut off from the main stream due to the changing course of the river, and a fossil word or oxbow is one that’s only used in one or two expressions, and is no longer part of the main stream language.

Oxbows

Some examples they gave include kith and kin, to and fro, and akimbo, as in arms/legs akimbo.

Other examples of fossil words / oxbows include:

  • by dint of = because of, by means of – dint is an old word for a blow or stroke, force, power, or the mark left by a blow
  • in high dudgeon = indignant and enraged – dudgeon possibly comes from the Welsh dygen (anger, sad, grievous, painful, serious). A related words is the old Scots word humdudgeon, meaning an unnecessary outcry of complaint, or an imaginary illness
  • in fine fettle = in good condition, energetic – fettle is nothern English dialect word meaning one’s physical condition or mental state.
  • the whole shebang = everything, the entire thing – shebang might come from the French chabane (hut, cabin), or from the Hiberno-English shebeen (a cabin where unlicensed liquor is sold and drunk), from the Irish síbín (illicit whiskey).

Do you know others in English or other languages?

Time is pouring

By Simon

This week I learnt the Russian expression до сих пор ― (do sikh por), which means still, hitherto, up to now, thus far, or literally “until this time”.

The пор comes from пора (pora – time, season, weather, period), which appears in such phrases as:

  • пора́ идти́ (pora idti) = it’s time to go
  • в са́мую по́ру (v samuju poru) = in the nick of time
  • до каки́х пор? (do kakikh por?) = how long?
  • с каки́х пор? (s kakikh por?) = since when?
  • до тех пор, пока́ (do tekh por, poka) = so long as
  • с тех пор, как (s tekh por, kak) = ever since
  • на пе́рвых пора́х (na pervykh porakh) = at first

Source: Wiktionary

It’s interesting that пора means both time and weather – some other languages also have one word for both: temps in French, amzer in Breton, aimsir in Irish. Do you know of others?

Treading in Spinach

By Simon

Language quiz image

A few posts ago I wrote about an interesting Swedish idiom – trampa i klaveret – to make a social mistake, put one’s foot in it, or literally “to step heavily on the accordion”.

Today I learnt the Danish equivalent – træde i spinaten (“to tread in the spinach”). For example, jeg har virkelig trådt i spinaten (“I have really trod in the spinach”) = I really put my foot in it.

Accoriding to Den Danske Ordbog, træde i spinaten means “utilsigtet sige eller gøre noget dumt” (to accidentally say or do something stupid).

Another version is træde/trampe i spinatbedet (“tread/tramp in the spinach bed”) [source].

Then there’s the spinatfugl or “spinach bird”, which is apparently a person who writes reviews or other cultural material in a newspaper without a journalistic background [source].

Does anybody know why such a person is known as a spinach bird?

The word spinach comes from the Middle English spinach, from Anglo-Norman spinache, from the Old French espinoche, from the Old Occitan espinarc, from the Arabic إِسْفَانَاخ‎ (ʾisfānāḵ), from the Persian اسپناخ‎ (ispanâx).

Apparently spinach cinema refers to “Movies that are not very exciting or interesting, but that one feels one must see because they are educational or otherwise uplifting.” [source]

Are there any interesting spinach or other vegetable-related idioms in other languages?

Gender Matters

By Simon

In languages with grammatical gender, such as Spanish and Swedish, gender matters and can sometimes lead to misundertandings if you get it wrong.

Some words may sound the same, but have different genders and different meanings. For example, in Swedish a team is ett lag (neuter) and a law is en lag (common gender).

I haven’t come across any other homographs like this in Swedish, but there probably are others. Do you known any more in Swedish or other languages?

I found some in Spanish, including:

  • el coma = coma; la coma = comma
  • el mañana = future; la mañana = morning
  • el moral = blackberry bush; la moral = morale, morality
  • el papa = pope; la papa = potato
  • el pez = fish; la pez = tar, pitch
  • el tema = subject; la tema = obsession

Other Swedish words I sometimes get muddled include: väg (path, road) and vägg (wall), and svart (black, dark) and svårt (hard).

So it’s not just gender that matters – accents and spelling are also important.

How do you learn the genders of nouns in languages with grammatical gender?

Shipping

By Simon

Sailing ship

Recently I’ve noticed the word ship being used quite a lot in the comments on some videos on YouTube.

Here are some examples (from the comments on the video below):

  • “why do people have to ship every single person who collabs with another even when they’re in a relationship”
  • “is it okay to ship them or”
  • “I Dont Care. I Ship It.”

From the context I guessed that it means that the commenter thinks the people in the video are in a relationship, or could be, or would like them to be, and that ship is an abbreviation of relationship.

There are a variety of definitions of ship and to ship in the Urban Dictionary, including:

  • Ship, N. Short for romantic relationship, popularized in fanfiction circles.
  • A ship is when you put 2 people’s names together and want them to be in a relationship. Most commonly used among fandoms.
  • Ship – A couple. Two people one thinks should date, or likes that they do/did. Usually combines the two names to make a ship name, i.e.:John+Karen=Jaren.
  • ship (v.) to support or endorse a romantic paring that is not canon in the work(s) in which they appear. The shipping of couples is often the purpose of many fanfiction stories. Used for characters in anime, manga, video games, tv shows, etc.

A related words include: shippable – when someone can be shipped with many people. Shipping – the phenomenon of using these terms. Shipper – someone involved in shipping. Shipping war – when two ships contradict each other [source].

According to Dictionary.com, (to) ship can mean:

  • Ship = “a romantic relationship between fictional characters, especially one that people discuss, write about, or take an interest in, whether or not the romance actually exists in the original book, show, etc.”
  • To ship =”to discuss, write about, or take an interest in a romantic relationship between (fictional characters): I’m shipping for those guys—they would make a great couple!”

Apparently it was first noticed in 1995.

According to Wikipedia:

  • “Shipping, initially derived from the word relationship, is the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters (in film, literature, television etc.) to be in a romantic relationship. It is considered a general term for fans’ emotional involvement with the ongoing development of a relationship in a work of fiction. Shipping often takes the form of creative works, including fanfiction and fan art, most often published on the internet. However, shipping can involve virtually any kind of relationship- from the well-known and established, through the ambiguous or those undergoing development, and even all the way to the highly improbable and the blatantly impossible. It can be used as a friendship term.”

Do you use ship the ways described above at all?

Have you noticed others using it?

Are there equivalent words in other languages?

Patois

By Simon

One of the things we talked about last night at the French conversation group was patois, specifically Jamaican (Jimiekn / Patwah).

In French patois means

“Système linguistique essentiellement oral, utilisé sur une aire réduite et dans une communauté déterminée (généralement rurale), et perçu par ses utilisateurs comme inférieur à la langue officielle.” [source]

or

“an essentially oral linguistic system, used in a small area and in a particular community (usually rural), and perceived by its users as inferior to the official language.”

In English patois means “an unwritten regional dialect of a language, esp. of French, usually considered substandard; the jargon of particular group.” [source].

Another definition of patois from Wiktionary is:

1. A regional dialect of a language (especially French); usually considered substandard.
2. Any of various French or Occitan dialects spoken in France.
3. Creole French in the Caribbean (especially in Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti).
4. Jamaican Patois, a Jamaican Creole language primarily based on English and African languages but also has influences from Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi.
5. Jargon or cant.

It comes from the Middle French patois (local dialect), from the Old French patois (incomprehensible speech, rude language), from the Old French patoier (to gesticulate, handle clumsily, paw), from pate (paw), from Vulgar Latin *patta (paw, foot), from the Frankish *patta (paw, sole of the foot), from the Proto-Germanic *pat-, *paþa- (to walk, tread, go, step), of uncertain origin [source].

Patois was first used in written French in 1643 to refer to non-standard varities of French, and to regional languages such as Picard, Occitan, Franco-Provençal and Catalan. Such varities and languages were assumed to be backward, countrified, and unlettered. Use of the word was banned by king Louis XIV in 1700.

There is no standard linguistic definition of patois, and to a linguist it can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, or vernaculars [source].

Are there similar words in other languages?

Blesk a hrom

By Simon

Lightning

Two interesting words that came up in my Czech lessons recently are blesk (lightning) and hrom (thunder).

Blesk also means a flash, thunderbolt or flashlight / torch, and sounds like a flash of lightning to me. Hrom could be to a clap of thunder.

I’m not sure which of them usually comes first – is it blesk a hrom or hrom a blesk?

In English it’s always thunder and lightning, even though the lightning comes first. Lightning and thunder just sounds wrong.

In Welsh it’s mellt a tharanau (lightning and thunder).

Is thunder and lightning or lightning and thunder in other languages?

Ungrammaticality

By Simon

When learning a new language, it helps if you learn how to use its grammar. There is much debate about how to do this.

Some people might advise you just to speak a language as soon as you know anything, and not to worry about making mistakes. In fact, they might encourage you to make mistakes. You will eventually pick up the grammar through extensive use of and exposure to the language, and maybe occasional glances at grammar books.

A ‘traditional’ approach to language learning involves concentrating more on learning the grammar before you try to use the language.

A combination of these approaches might be most effective. This is something I discussed on my latest podcast.

Last night one of the people at the French conversation group seems to have taken the first approach – he knows quite a bit of French vocabulary, but is not very good at putting words together into coherent sentences, or at using the grammar. As a result, it was rather difficult to work out what he was trying to say. I imagine native speakers of French might have less patience than us when trying to understand him.

So while it is possible to speak a language without knowing much of the grammar, you might find it difficult to make yourself understood.

Instrumental Idioms

By Simon

trampa i klaveret

The other day I learnt an interesting Swedish idiom – nu trampade jag verkligen i klaveret, which means “I really put my foot in it” or literally “now I really stepped (heavily) on the accordion / piano / keyboard”.

According to the Svenska Akademiens Ordböcker, trampa i klaveret means “göra en social tabbe” (to make a social mistake). Apparently it comes from the phrase “Det låter, sa bonden/klockaren, trampade i klavere” (It sounds, said the farmer / watchman, like trampling on the keyboard” [source].

To put one’s foot in it means “to say or do something tactless or embarrassing; commit a blunder or indiscretion.” [source]. The origins of this phrase are not known.

Other idioms involves musical instruments, or instrumental idioms, include:

  • rhoi’r ffidl yn y to = to give up / throw in the towel (“to put the fiddle in the roof)
  • to play second fiddle = to take a subordinate position to someone was is more important
  • to blow one’s own trumpet = to boast about your own sucesses
  • to blow the whistle (on sth/sb) = to report illegal / unacceptable activities

Do you know any more?