Category: Words and phrases

Heartsease

By Simon

Pansies in my mum's garden

Heartsease, or heart’s-ease, is one of the names for the pansy (see photo), both garden and wild varieties. This name apparently comes from St. Euphrasia, whose name means ‘cheerfulness of mind’ in Greek.

Other names for the garden pansy, or Viola tricolor hortensis / Viola x wittrockiana, include: viola, violet, love in idleness, or kiss-me-quick.

The name pansy comes from the French word pensée (thought). It came into English in the mid-15th century as the name for the viola.

The name love in idleness was meant to imply the idea of a lover who does nothing but think of his or her beloved.

The wild pansy, or Viola tricolor, is variously known as: Johnny Jump up, heartsease, heart’s ease, heart’s delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, and three faces in a hood.

In Russian the pansy is known as Анютины глазки (Anyutiny glazki – Litte Annie’s Eyes).

In German the pansy is known as Stiefmütterchen (Little Stepmother), Muttergottesschuh (Mother God Shoe), Mädchenaugen (Girl’s Eyes), Schöngesicht (Beautiful Face) or Liebesgesichtli (Love Poems).

Does the pansy have interesting names in other languages?

Some other flowers that begin with P

Sources: Wikipedia, Google Translate

Phrasemes

By Simon

From a new article that I added to Omniglot today – How to Avoid Phraseme Goofs in Other Languages, I learnt a new word, phraseme. I hadn’t encountered before, so I thought I’d find out more about it.

According to Wiktionary, a phraseme is:

An utterance, consisting of multiple words or morphemes, at least one of whose components is selectionally constrained or restricted by linguistic convention such that it is not freely chosen.

One type of phraseme is idioms, such as to hit the sack (to go to sleep), under the weather (sick, unwell). Idioms are also known as non-compositional phrasemes, as their meanings cannot be determined from the meanings of their component words.

Another example is the compositional phraseme, which consists of words that normally appear together, such as heavy rain, strong wind and bright sun (you wouldn’t usually say heavy wind).

More information about phrasemes

Toe cozy

By Simon

My new ToeCozy

How do you find something if you don’t know what it’s called or even if it exists?

This is the problem that faced me yesterday when I started looking for something to cover the toes of my left foot that stick out of my plaster cast. I was using a sock, but it didn’t fit very well, and kept on slipping off, so I thought I’d try to find a better alternative.

I went on Amazon (other online retailers are available), and searched for cover for plaster cast, or something similar, I soon found what I was looking for – the toe cozy or ToeCozy. Like a tea cozy, but it fits on your toes rather than on your teapot.

I think it’s a brand name rather than a generic name. Is there a generic name for such things? Maybe toe cover.

When you’re learning a foreign language you often faced a similar situation, especially when you start, as you have only limited vocabulary. You just have to use the words you do know to describe things you don’t have words for. Or maybe you have other ways to get round this.

London’s Euston

By Simon

Last week when I was waiting on Bangor station for the train to London, I heard announcements that referred to the London station that trains from Bangor go to as “London’s Euston“, rather than the usual London Euston or just Euston. I hadn’t heard it referred to in that way before so noticed it and thought it strange.

Euston station was built on land owned by the Dukes of Grafton, and named after Euston Hall his ancestral home in Suffolk, near the village of Euston, a name first recorded in Domesday Book, and possibly of Anglo-Saxon origin, maybe from “Efe’s Tun” (Efe’s farmstead).

There are a number of mainline railway stations in London that serve different parts of the country. As well as Euston, which serves northwest England and north Wales, there’s Victoria (for south and southeast of England, and an English queen); Paddington (for the southwest of England and south Wales, and for small Peruvian bears); Waterloo (for south and southwest England, and an ABBA song), and so on.

Details of how the major railway stations in London got their names.

Homeward bound

By Simon

Yesterday I had a good time in London with a Russian-speaking friend. We talked mainly in English with a sprinkling of Russian from time to time. In the morning we went to the Design Museum and saw a special exhibition about Moscow, which was interesting. Then had a wander around Holland Park, which is beautiful, especially at this time of year when lots of trees are in blossom (see below).

A photo of the Kyoto Garden (京都庭園) Holland Park in London

After lunch in Hammersmith we played mini golf in Acton Park, which was great fun. Neither of us were very good, but I did manage to get one hole in one. In the evening we went tango dancing, then watched a Russian film – an interesting re-telling of the Beauty and the Beast story called Аленький цветочек (The Scarlet Flower). There were no subtitles, and my Russian isn’t yet good enough to understand much, so my friend translated for me. The Russian they use in the film is old-fashioned, and they speak in a very dramatic, almost operatic way, so it’s not easy to understand.

Сегодня я еду домой or I’m going home today (“Today I go/travel homeward”). The word домой [dɐˈmoj] is one I learnt and used quite a bit yesterday. It means home, homeward or to the house, and related words/forms include:

– дом [dom] = house, home, family, household
– дома [ˈdomə] = at home (genetive singular)
– домашний [dɐˈmaʂnʲɪj] = home, household, house; private; domestic, family; home-made, homespun
– домовой [dəmɐˈvoj] = house; a house spirit or sprite
– домосед [dəmɐˈsʲet] = stay-at-home, homebody

Source: Wiktionary

Just simply

By Simon

A useful Russian word I learnt this week is просто [ˈprɔstə], which means easily, simply or just.

Here are some examples of how it is used:

– Нам просто надо выезжать немного раньше обычного.
= We just have to leave, you know, a little earlier than usual.

– я зашёл просто повидаться = I just popped in to see you

– Уж слишком просто запихать матрас сзади.
= It’s way too easy to fit a mattress in the back.

– всё это просто недоразумение = all this is simply a misunderstanding

– Мы просто собираемся выпить = We’re just going in for a drink

– Мне просто не хочется притворяться кем-то другим.
= I just wish I didn’t have to pretend like I was someone else.

– Мне просто нужно включить свои мозги.
= I just need a minute to get my head in gear.

Just, a very useful little word, can also be translated as только [ˈtɔlʲkə], for example:

– Только все это так сложно = It’s just all so complicated
– Они только что забрали их = They just took them
– Он только что ушёл = He’s just left
– Только не сейчас = Not just now

In other contexts there are other ways to translate just:

– Как я и ожидал = Just as I expected
– Это как раз то, что надо = It’s just right
– Ровно два часа = Just two o’clock
– Я уже собрался позвонить = I was just about to phone
– Она столь же умна, как и ты = She’s just as clever as you
– Как раз когда он собрался уходить = Just as he was leaving
– Перед самым Рождеством = just before Christmas

Sources: Reverso and Reverso Context

Abounding in fish

By Simon

The Mill Pond and River Dart

I spent the weekend in Devon with my brother and his family. It was my nephew’s first birthday yesterday and I was there mainly to celebrate that. My journey, a long and meadering one, took me through some places with interesting names, such as Exeter, Teignmouth, Dawlish and Paignton.

As well as admiring the scenery, I started wondering about the origins of these names, and in the case of Teignmouth, how to pronounce it.

Exeter comes from the Old English Escanceaster, and is named after the River Exe, with the Old English suffix -ceaster (fortres, fortified town). So the name means “fortress on the Exe”. The Welsh name for the city, Caerwysg, means the same thing.

The River Exe gets it’s name from the Latin isca, which is what the Romans called the fort they built where Exeter is now, in 55AD. They later called it Isca Dumnoniorum (Watertown of the Dumnonii), to distinguish it from Isca (Augusta) or Caerleon in South Wales.

The Latin name isca is a modified form of a Brittonic root meaning “water” or “abounding in fish”. Other river names from the same root include Esk, Axe and Usk. I think the root referred to is the Proto-Celtic *udenskyos (water), from the Proto-Indo-European *wódr̥ (water) [source].

The Proto-Indo-European *wódr̥ is also the root of words for water in Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, and Goidelic Celitic languages. It is the root of words for wave in the Romance languages (onda, unda, onde, etc), and of an obsolete English word for wave, und, from the Middle English unde (a wave), via the Old French unde (wave).

Teignmouth is pronounced [tɪnməθ] and comes from the Old English Tengemuða (mouth of the stream) [source].

Dawlish, according to Wikipedia, comes from a Welsh river name meaning ‘black stream’. In Roman times it was known as Dolfisc (dark river or the devil’s water). According to dawlish.com, Dawlish was originally spelt Deawlisc, a Celtic (Brythonic) word meaning ‘Devil Water’, or from a word meaning “black stream”, which is cognate with Welsh du (g)lais (black stream).

Paignton [ˈpeɪntən] comes from an Anglo-Saxon name meaning Paega’s town.

In case you’re wondering, the photo is of the mill pond and River Dart in Stoke Gabriel, where my brother lives. Stoke comes from the Old English word stoc (place), which also has two two specialised meanings: (1) a religious place and (2) a secondary settlement [source], and Gabriel is a saint/angel associated with the area. The Dart apparently gets its name from a Brythonic Celtic word meaning ‘river where oak trees grow’ [source]. If you click on the photo you can see a larger version, and some of my other photos from Stoke Gabriel.

Rollipokes, ronners and roudges

By Simon

If I offered you a rollipoke, would you have any idea what it was or what to do with it?

This is a word I came across while looking for something else in the Dictionary of The Scots Language / Dictionar o the Scots Leid today. It is defined as, “A sacking of loosely woven hemp in which cheese was wrapped before being buried to ripen.”

Rollipoke comes from roll / row, one of the meanings of which is ‘to wrap up, around, in’; and poke is a variant of pock (a simple type of bag or pouch, a small sack or sack-like receptacle).

Ronner and roudge are other words for the rollipoke.

In East Anglian varieties of English, a rollipoke is “hempen cloth of very coarse texture. Perhaps so named, because only fit to be used as bags or wrappers for rolls or bales of finer goods.” [from The Vocbulary of East-Anglia Etc. Volume 2]

Some examples of use of poke / pock (also written powk, poak, etc):

– An ill-bred loon or twa crackit a paper pyoke at the verra time he was speakin’.

– Every young sheeld hed his muckle pokky o’ sweeties, ‘at he haandit aboot in nev-fues.

– He wambles like a poke o’ bran.

Glossary
– loon = a rogue, rascal, scoundrel, a worthless person
– sheeld (a variant of chield) = child
– muckle = large, big
– nev-fues = ?
– to wamble = to stagger, totter, wobble

Pock can also mean:

– the bag used by a beggar for collecting meal or the like given in charity, a beggar’s scrip or wallet.

– a sack or bag holding a certain quantity of wool, a measure of wool

– A net in the form of a bag or pouch used for catching salmon, a purse-net; a bag-shaped net for catching small coal-fish

Related words include:

– butter-poki = a small thin bag through which the water is strained from freshly-churned butter

– pock-end = the bottom or corner of a bag or receptacle, esp. one used to hold money.

– pock-pud(ding) = (1) a dumpling or steamed pudding cooked in a bag of muslin or similar thin material; (2) a jocular or pejorative nickname for an Englishman from the supposed fondness of the English for steamed puddings, with an additional implication of omnivorousness and stolidity.

Ave a butchers at er barnet

By Simon

The title of this post is an example of Cockney, a form of speech you might hear in London, specifically in the Cheapside district of the City of London. It includes to bits of rhyming slang – butchers and barnet. Do you know, or can you guess what they mean?

To (h)ave a butchers (the initial h is not used in Cockney) means to have a look or just to look. It is used in informal English in much of the UK, and I didn’t realise it was rhyming slang until I discovered that it actually stands for butcher’s hook = look.

Barnet means hair, and until I read Vulgar Tongues: An Alternative History of English Slang by Max Décharné, which I just finished, I didn’t know that barnet is also rhyming slang: Barnet Fair = hair.

Barnet Fair is a fair that has been taking place since 1588 in Barnet, a part of north London also known as High Barnet or Chipping Barnet. The main focus of the fair was originally horses and other livestock, but these days it is a funfair, and takes place from 4-7 September each year.

So the title means ‘Have a look at her hair’.

Incidentally, in Swedish barnet means ‘the child’ from barn [bɑːrn] (child, infant, baby, offspring, family) [source].

Barn comes from the Old Norse barn (child), from the Proto-Germanic *barną (child), from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (to bear, to carry), which is also the root of the Scots bairn (child), the Icelandic / Faroese / Norwegian / Danish barn (child), and related words in other Indo-European languages [source].

According to Wikipedia, rhyming slang was first recording in the East End of London in about 1840, and the earliest glossaries of this slang appeared in 1859 in the Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words by John Camden Hotten. He included examples such as frog and toad (road), apples and pears (stairs), Battle of the Nile (a tile, a vulgar term for a hat), and Duke of York (take a walk).

It is unknown why this type of slang originally emerged. It was possibly a game, or a way to confuse outsiders, a way for criminals to confuse the police, and/or a way to maintain a sense of belonging.

More up-to-date examples of rhyming slang, from cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk include:

– Andy McNab = kebab / cab
– Angela Merkel = circle
– Barack Obama = pyjamas
– Calvin Klein = wine / fine (body)
– Captain Kirk = work / Turk
– Dudley Moore = score (£20)
– Mariah Carey = scary

Is there rhyming slang in other languages?

Protagonists and sidekicks

By Simon

When listening to The Allusionist podcast today I learnt an interesting word – tritagonist, who was the actor who played the third role in ancient Greek drama.

Tritagonist comes from the Ancient Greek word τρίτἀγωνιστής (triagōnistḗs), from τρίτ ‎(third) and ἀγωνιστής ‎(combatant, participant).

The actors who played the first and second roles in ancient Greek drama were known as the protagonist and deuteragonist, or sidekick. Proto- comes from πρῶτος ‎(first), a superlative of πρό ‎(before), and deuter- from δευτερ (second).

Proto goes back to the Proto-Indo-European *pro/*per- (to go over), which is also the root of:

– Proto-Celtic *ɸro = before, in front of, in addition
– Welsh rhy = too
– Irish ro = too
– Proto-Germanic *fram = from, by, due to
– English from
– Scots frae = from
– Swedish från = from; and fram = forward
– Icelandic frá = from, away from, about
– Latin per = through, by means of, during, and related words in Romance languages.

The antonym of protagonist is antagonist, from ἀντί ‎(against) and ἀγωνιστής (combatant, participant).

Source: Wiktionary