Category: Words and phrases

Fair friends

By Simon

Bra vänner är som stjärnor. Du ser dem inte alltid, men du vet att de alltid finns där.

I learnt two words for friend in Swedish this week – vän [vɛːn] and kompis [kɔmpɪs]. The former is translated as “buddy” in my Swedish lessons, and the latter as “friend”.

Vän can mean friend, comrade, lover, mate, pal, sympathizer, well-wisher or acquaintance, and is also an old word for fair or beautiful. It comes from the Old Norse vinr (friend), from the Proto-Germanic *winiz (friend, loved one), from the Proto-Indo-European *wenh₁- (to seek, desire, love, win).

The element -win in names such as Darwin, Edwin, Godwin, Irwin, etc comes from the same root, as does the name Venus (via Latin).

Kompis cane be translated as brother, buddy, friend, chum, comrade, crony, mate, mucker, and is a contraction of kompanjon (partner, associate) +‎ -is.

Vän appears in expressions such as:

– flickvän = girlfriend
– pojkvän = boyfriend
– hjärtevän = beloved, close friend, sweetheart
– ovän = enemy
– väninna = female friend (of a female)
– vänlig = friendly, kind, gentle, amicable, affable
– vänling = kind, nice, sweet
– vänskap = friendship
– vänskaplig = friendly, amicable
– väntjänst = a service done out of friendship
– vänkrets = circle of friends
– vänort = sister town, twin town

Other Swedish words for friend or acquaintance include:

– kamrat = friend, associate, chum, comrade, fellow, mate, partner, fellow
– bekant = friend, acquaintance
– polare = brother, buddy, mate, dawg, mucker, crony, pally
– fränder = kinsman

Which of these are most commonly used?

The words on the image mean “Good friends are like stars. You do not always see them, but you know they are always there.” This is one of the things that pops up when you search for “vänner” (friends), e.g. on this site.

Sources: Wiktionary, bab.la

Treading Together

By Simon

Treading Together

In Swedish one word for a meeting is ett sammenträde. I wondered about the origins of this word, so thought I would investigate.

Sammenträde comes from sammanträda (to meet, to hold a meeting, to convene), which comes from sammen (together) and träda (to tread, walk, step). So when you have a meeting in Swedish, you are “treading together”.

Sammenträde also means session, conclave or assembly. Related expressions include:

– sammanträda igen = to reconvene
– sammanträde som försiggår i plenum – plenary session
– regeringssammanträde – cabinet meeting

Other Swedish words for meeting include:

– möte = meeting, assembly, conference, convocation, encounter, engagement, rally, meet
– konferens = meeting, conference, consultation, school meeting
– samling = array, gathering, meeting, accumulation, aggregate, assembling, assembly, battery, body, bunch, circus, cluster, coalition, collection, crowd, cumulation, garner, huddle, lot, meet, pack, corpus
– sammenkomst = assembly, gathering, gettogether, meeting, conference, session (“arrive together”)
– församling = assembly, parish, cure, flock, township, meeting, congregation, diet

Are there interesting words for meeting in other languages?

Sources: Wiktionary, bab.la

Filling Up Your Years

By Simon

Hourglass image

One way to say that you have a birthday in Swedish is to use the verb fylla (to fill up, load, pack). For example:

– Jag fyller i april = My birthday is in April*
– Du fyller år i morgen = Tomorrow is your birthday
– Han fyller nämligen år i dag = It’s his birthday today
– Hon fyllde 40 år i går = She was 40 years old yesterday

Birthday in Swedish is födelsedag [ˈføːdɛlsɛˌdɑːɡ /ˈfœlsɛˌdɑː(ɡ)], and Happy Birthday is Grattis på födelsedagen. Födelsedag comes from födelse (birth) and dag (day). Födelse comes from föda (to feed, give birth), which is related to the English words food and feed; and -else (a suffix that makes verbs into nouns).

*Could you also say Min födelsedag är i april (My birthday is in April)?

When asking how old someone is in Swedish, could you ask many years they’ve filled?

Is it polite to ask someone’s age in Sweden?

Are there interesting ways to refer to birthdays in other languages?

Sources: bab.la, Wiktionary

Cake on Cake and Gilded Lilies

By Simon

A gilded lily

When you have to much of a good thing, or are repeating things superfluously, you’re putting cake on cake – tårta på tårta or kaka på kaka, at least in Swedish [source].

For example:

– Det är tårta på tårta = That would be too much [source]
– Det är lite tårta på tårta att tala om ”ISBN-nummer” = It is a bit superfluous to talk about “ISBN number”

The English phrase “too much of a good thing” first appeared in writing in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It in 1600 [source].

A similar idiom is “to gild the lily“, meaning to embellish or improve something unnecessarily. Or to add superfluous attributes to something. It is apparently a misquote from Shakespeare’s play King John (1595):

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet, to smooth the ice, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or with taper-light to seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

Other related idioms include “to go overboard” and “to over-egg the pudding” [source].

In Chinese an equivalent idiom is 畫蛇添足 [画蛇添足] (huàshétiānzú) = “to draw a snake and add legs” [source].

Are there other idioms in English or other languages with a similar meaning?

Photo from: http://www.janneyscollection.com/product/arthur-court-gilded-lily-side-table/

Catfish and Sockpuppets

By Simon

Photo of a catfish

A catfish is “any of an order (Siluriformes) of chiefly freshwater stout-bodied scaleless bony fishes having long tactile barbels” or “a person who sets up a false personal profile on a social networking site for fraudulent or deceptive purposes” [source].

According to Wikipedia, a catfish is “someone pretending to be someone they are not on the internet”. The term apparently became popular after the 2010 film Catfish, the story of a man who falls in love with a girl online who is using a false identity. However it was used for decades before then.

I only discovered the second meaning today when reading something a friend posted online. He talked about being catfished on a date, and I had to look up the term.

A few years ago I was catfished myself by someone on a dating website who claimed to be a Russian girl living in France, but turned out to be an online scammer looking for money. I didn’t send them any money, and got to practise my French for a few months, so it wasn’t an entirely negative experience.

A similar term is sockpuppet, which is “an online identity used for purposes of deception”, and was originally “a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person”. It was first used in 1993, and can now refer to someone who praises, defends or supports a person or organization, manipulates public opinion, or circumvents a suspension or ban from a website [source].

Photo from Flickr

Zhoozhing up

By Simon

The word zhoozh [ʒʊʃ/ʒʊʒ] was one of the words of the week on the episode of the Talk The Talk podcast I listened to yesterday.

There are various ways to write it: zhoozh, zhoosh, zhuzh, or even tszuj. It means “To tweak, finesse or improve (something); to make more appealing or exciting”, and is often used with up, e.g. to zhoozh up.

Zhoozh was possibly first used in the 1970s in Polari, a cant or slang used by Romani people, and also gay people, in the UK, especially in theatres.

It may come from the Angloromani yuser (to clean) and yusher (to clear), from yus-, yuz-, yuzh- (clean) and yush- (clear), from the Romani žuž-, už- (clean”).

It is also used to mean to blend ingredients using a food mixer or blender. For example, throw the ingredients in the blender and give them a quick zhoozh.

In South African slang it means stylish, hot, or cool.

Source: Wiktionary

See also:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/zhuzh-zhoosh-queer-eye-origin-kressley
http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/placeholder.html
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=zhoozh

Are there any similar words in other languages?

Blundering about, eyes closed

By Simon

Wink emoji

I learnt today that the Swedish word blunda means to shut one’s eyes, to keep one’s eyes shut, to refuse to see something; to pretend not to know about, or to ignore. It comes from the Old Norse word blunda (to shut the eyes, to doze) [source].

Related words include blund (good sleep, wink), blund for (to wink at, turn a blind eye to), and Jon/John Blund, a character from folklore who brings good sleep and dreams to children, known as the sandman in English.

In Icelandic blunda means to doze.

Wink is also linked to sleep in English – you might take forty winks, or not sleep a wink, which might make you blunder about.

The English word blunder comes from the same root, via the Middle English blunder, blonder (disturbance, strife), and blonden, blanden (to mix; mix up); and blunden (to stagger; stumble), from the Old Norse blunda [source].

Blunder is also a Swedish word meaning blooper, gaffe, trip, bloomer and blunder.

Cows, beef and shepherds

By Simon

Cows among the heather in Cregneash, Isle of Man

Yesterday I learnt the Russian word for beef, говядина [ɡɐˈvʲædʲɪnə], and the promotely forgot it. So I thought I’d investigate its etymology to help me remember it.

говядина comes from говядо [ɡɐˈvʲadə] and old word for cattle. This comes from the Proto-Slavic *govędo (head of cattle, bull, ox), from the Proto-Indo-European *gʷew-n̥d-, from *gʷṓws (cattle) [source].

The usual Russian word for cow is корова [source], which comes from the Proto-Slavic *kőrva (cow), from the Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (horn) [source].

*gʷṓws is also the root of:

  • gak = boar (Albanian)
  • govs = cattle, cow (Latvian)
  • говядо = beef (Ukrainian)
  • говедо = cattle (Bulgarian, Macedonian & Serbian)
  • govedo = cattle (Croatian & Slovenian)
  • hovado = brute (Czech & Slovak)
  • gowjedo = cow (Lower Sorbian)
  • *kūz = cow (Proto-Germanic)
  • Kuh = cow (German)
  • koe = cow (Dutch)
  • ku = cow (Norwegian)
  • ko = cow (Swedish, Danish, North Frisian)
  • coo, kye = cow (Scots)
  • βοῦς = cow (Ancient Greek)
  • bōs = cow, bull, ox (Latin)
  • bou = ox (Catalan)
  • bue = ox, beef (Italian)
  • bife = steak (Portuguese)
  • bou= ox, idiot (Romanian)
  • buey= ox. steer (Spanish)
  • bœuf = cow, ox, beef, jam session (French)
  • *bāus = cow (Proto-Celtic)
  • *bōws = ox (Proto-Celtic)
  • bu, buw = cow, bullock, head of cattle (Middle Welsh)
  • buwch = cow (Welsh)
  • bugh = cow (Cornish)
  • bu, buoc’h = cow (Breton)
  • bó = cow (Irish)
  • booa = cow (Manx)
  • bò = cow (Scottish Gaelic)

The English words beef and bovine come ultimately from the same root. Beef comes from the Middle English beef, bef, beof, from the Anglo-Norman beof, from the Old French buef, boef (ox). from Latin bōs (“ox”)

The Proto-Indo-European word *gʷowkólos, from *gʷṓws (cow) & *kʷel- (to revolve, move around, sojourn) gives us the following words in the Celtic languages [Source].

  • *boukolyos = herdsman (Proto-Celtic)
  • *bʉgöl = herdsman (Proto-Brythonic
  • bugail = shepherd, pastor (Welsh)
  • bugel = child, shepherd (Cornish)
  • bugel = child (Breton)
  • búachaill = cowherd (Old Irish)
  • buachaill = boy, herdsman, servant, boyfriend (Irish)
  • bochilley = shepherd, herdsman (Manx)
  • buachaill, buachaille = cowherd, herdsman, shepherd, youth (Scottish Gaelic)

Oină

By Simon

People playing oină

I came across the oină in one of the Romanian lessons I did today. It’s translated as ‘oina’ without any explanation of what it means. As the lesson was about sport and oină is something you play, I guessed that it’s some kind of sport.

According to Wikpedia, oină [ˈoj.nə] is a traditional Romanian sport similar to baseball and lapta (a similar Russian sport).

The word oină was originally hoina, and is comes from the Cuman word oyn (game), which is cognate with the Turkish oyun). The game was first mention in writing in 1364. Cuman is an extinct Turkish language that was spoken in Hungary until the 18th century.

Going stag

By Simon

A stag

I came across the expression “to go stag” the other day in an article and was puzzled by it. I couldn’t quite work out what it meant from the context, so looked it up.

According to Merriam-Webster it is an expression used in the USA that means: “to go to a party or other social event by oneself.”

The American Heritage Dictionary defines stag as: “A person who attends a social gathering unaccompanied by a partner, especially a man who is unaccompanied by a woman”, and also as: “a social gathering for men only.”

Merriam-Webster has a similar definition for stag: “social gathering of men only one who attends a dance or party without a companion.”

In the UK and Ireland a stag can be “a social event for males held in honor of a groom on the eve of his wedding, attended by male friends of the groom” [source]. Stag can also refer to the groom. A stag is also known as a stag do, stag party, stag weekend, bachelor party (USA & Canada), buck’s party (Australia). Are there other names for such an event?

Such events date back at least to the 5th century B.C. The ancient Spartans apparently celebrated a groom’s last night as a single man by having a dinner and making toasts to him [source].

Stag also means an adult male deer. Itcomes from the Middle English steg, stagge (stag), from the Old English stagga, stacga (stag) and the Old Norse steggi, steggr (a male animal), from the Proto-Germanic *staggijô, *staggijaz (male, male deer, porcupine), probably from the Proto-Indo-European *stegʰ-, *stengʰ- (to sting; rod, blade; sharp, stiff) [source].

The photo comes from Flickr