Category: Words and phrases

Les courses

By Simon

I discovered yesterday that French equivalents of ‘to go shopping’ or ‘to do the shopping’ are faire des courses or faire les commissions, which also mean ‘to run errands’. These expressions were new to me because when in French I’ve either stayed with families or in hotels and have never had to do or talk about such activities.

According to Reverso (to go) shopping (for food/groceries) is (faire) les courses, but shopping as a leisure activity is le shopping. In English you might say, ‘I am doing the shopping’ = I am shopping for food/groceries, but ‘I love shopping’ might refer to the leisure aspect of the activity. Do you make this distinction?

Related expressions include:
– partir faire les magasins = to go on a shopping expedition/trip
– les courses alimentaires = food shopping
– liste des courses = shopping list
– achat en ligne = online shopping
– centre commercial = shopping arcade / precinct / centre / mall
– sac/panier à provisions = shopping bag/basket
– caddie (m) = shopping trolley / cart
– faire du lèche-vitrines = to go window shopping
– faire ses cadeaux de Noël = to do one’s Christmas shopping

One way to practise languages you’re learning is to use them to write shopping lists. I usually write mine in Welsh.

Déménager

By Simon

In French if you want to talk about movement in general you use bouger, but for moving house you use déménager. The other day a friend pointed out that the root of déménager is ménage (housework, housekeeping, household, married couple), as in ménage à trois, from the Old French manage, from manoir (manor, country house), from the Latin manere (manner, fashion, way).

Déménager can also mean to leave, get lost, clear out, to be crazy, and related words include:

– emménager = to move in (to a house)
– un deménageur = furniture mover
– un deménagement = removal, moving
– déménager à la cloche de bois = to sneak off in the middle of the night
– Ça déménage ! = It’s great/brilliant!

As well as déménager, there are a few other French words for movement:

– bouger, remuer = to move (general)
– évoluer = to move (events, politics)
– circuler = to move, circulate (traffic); move along (get out of the way)
– avancer = to move (vehicle), advance, move along/forward
– voyager = to move about (from place to place), travel
– se déplacer = to move about (in a room or house)
– s’éloigner, s’en aller = to move off
– se pousser = to move over

Sources: Reverso, french.about.com, Wiktionary

Today and tomorrow

By Simon

Yesterday a friend asked me about the origins of the words today and tomorrow, and whether the to- part of them was orginally the. You sometimes come across expressions like ‘on the morrow’, and words appear with hypens in older texts: to-day and to-morrow.

According to the OED, today comes from the Old English tó dæg – the dæg part means day and the tó part means “at/in/during (a time), or on (a day). Tomorrow comes from to morȝen or to morwen – the morrow part means morning.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, today comes from the Old English todæge or to dæge (on (the) day), and Tomorrow comes from the middle English to morewe, from the Old English to morgenne (on (the) morrow), with morgenne being the dative of morgen (morning). They were written as two words until 16th century, then hypenated until the early 20th century.

In German (der) Morgen means morning, and morgen means tomorrow, and tomorrow morning is morgen früh or morgen vormittag, not morgen Morgen!

In French the word for today, aujourd’hui, comes from the expression au jour d’hui (on the day of today) – hui comes from the Latin hŏdĭē (today), a contraction of hŏc diē (this day). The Italian word for today, oggi, comes from the same root, and the expression al giorno d’oggi (nowadays, these days, today) has the same structure as aujourd’hui, though hasn’t replaced oggi as aujourd’hui has replaced hui in French. The Spanish and Portuguese words for today, hoy and hoje, also come from the same root and are used without embellishment. The Romanian word for today, astăzi, comes from a different root though – the Latin ista die (that day).

Sources: Wiktionnaire, Wikizionario, Wikcionario, Wikcionário & Wikționar.

Haste and speed

By Simon

A friend asked me to investigate the expression more haste, less speed as it doesn’t seem to make sense. I’ve always interpreted as meaning you should do something more hastily and less quickly, which seems illogical to me.

The OED defines haste as:

1. Urgency or impetuosity of movement resulting in or tending to swiftness or rapidity; quickness, speed, expedition (properly of voluntary action).

2. Such quickness of action as excludes due consideration or reflection; hurry, precipitancy, want of deliberation, rashness.

The primary meaning of speed is given as:

Quickness in moving or making progress from one place to another, usually as the result of special exertion; celerity, swiftness; also, power or rate of progress.

So both words are related to swiftness, but haste can also indicate imeptuousness. There are a number of other meanings of speed though, which are now obsolete:

1. abundance; 2. power, might; 3. Success, prosperity, good fortune; profit, advancement, furtherance.

I suspect that the speed part of ‘more haste, less speed’ might be using speed in the sense of success, good fortune, etc. That would make more sense.

Then again, maybe the saying means that if you doing something hastily, you will also do it more slowly. So maybe it’s encouraging you to slow down, take your time and do it better.

How do you interpret this expression? Do you know any simliar ones?

Baragouiner

By Simon

Bara ha gwin / Pain et vin / Bread and Wine

The French words baragouin and baragouiner came up in conversation yesterday and I thought I’d write about them today as they have an interesting etymology.

According to Reverso baragouin means ‘gibberish, gabble or double Dutch’ and baragouiner ‘means ‘to gibber, jabber, gabble’. The Larousse Dictionary defines baragouin as language that is incomprehensible due to poor pronunciation, vocabulary or syntax, or an incomprehensible foreign language; and baragouiner as to talk a foreign language, incorrect pronounciation, or to express something in an incomprehensible way.

According to Wikitionaire and Le Dictionnaire d’étymologie française, these words come from two Breton words – bara (bread) and gwin (wine) – things that Breton-speaking travellers often asked for from French-speaking inn keepers during the Middle Ages and which the French speakers particularly noticed. As the French speakers didn’t understand what the Bretons were saying, they associated these words with gibberish or an incomprehensible language.

Paid a gwgu!

By Simon

I learnt the Welsh expression Paid a gwgu! [paɪd a ˈgʊgɨ] from friends in Aberystwyth yesterday. It means ‘Don’t frown/glower/scowl!’. I like the sound of gwgu, which doesn’t seem like a frowny word to me – it’s more like a baby’s babbling. Related words include gwg (frown) and gwgus (frowning).

Words for frown in Irish, grainc and gruig, are possibly related to the Welsh word gwg. Other words frowny Irish words include púic and místá. The verbal expression is grain/gruig a chur ort féin (to put a frown on oneself), and an idiomatic way of saying, for example, ‘he frowned at me’ is bhí muc ar gach mala aige chugam (“he had a pig on each eyebrow to me”).

Pelmeni

By Simon

Pelmeni (from: http://www.st-petersburg-dd.de/ru/gerichte/russische/pelmeni.html)

Characters in the novels by Andrey Kurkov (Андрій Юрійович Курков) that I’ve read recently often enjoy a bowl of dish of pelmeni, which is obviously some kind of food, but is not translated. I wondered what pelmeni might be, so thought I’d find out.

According to Wikipedia, pelmeni are “dumplings consisting of a filling wrapped in thin, unleavened dough that originated in Siberia”. The dough is made of flour and water, with eggs sometimes added, and the filling is minced pork, lamb, beef, mutton or other meat, mixed with pepper or other spices and onions, or with fish or mushrooms. They are cooked by boiling them in water or broth, or by frying.

In Russian they are known as пельмени (pel’meni – pl) / пельмень (pel’men’ – sg), in Belarusian they are пяльмені (pyal’meni), in Ukrainian they are пельмені, (pel’meni), and in Latvian they are pelmeņi. The name comes from пельнянь (pel’nyan’), which means “ear bread” in the Komi, Udmurt, and Mansi languages.

According to the School of Russian and Asian Studies Russian pelmeni (русские пельмени) come from Siberia and the word comes from Komi, though the receipe might originally come from China. They certainly sound like to Chinese 餃子 (饺子) jiǎozi.

Here are some pelmeni recipes:
http://tasterussian.com/russian-pelmeni-recipe.html
http://www.russianfoods.com/en/pelmeni/
http://www.ruscuisine.com/recipes/breads-and-pastry/dumplings/n–524

Are you a fan of pelmeni, or do you have something similar in your country?

Gordon Bennett!

By Simon

Gordon Bennett! is used as an exclamation of surprise or disbelief. According to The Phrase Finder, it first appeared in print as an exclamation in a 1937 novel by James Curtis – You’re in the Racket Too, and is possibly a version of the exclamation Gor blimey!, a euphemistic version of God blind me!.

It is also believed that the exclamation is related to one James Gordon Bennett Jr. (1841-1918), a journalist whose father, also James Gordon Bennett, founded the New York Herald. JGB Jr. was apparently notorious for his wild lifestyle and extravagant spending and newsworthy stunts.

Is Gordon Bennett! used in other English-speaking countries?

Are toned-down versions of oaths, like Gordon Bennett!, used in other languages?

Word skipping to Venus

By Simon

I was asked today about the origins of the word worship. The person who asked was told by a highly-educated minister that “worship” is derived from an old English word, “word-skip”. Supposedly, “word-skip” means “word shaper” or “shaper of words”.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary: worship comes from the Old English worðscip, wurðscip (Anglian), weorðscipe (West Saxon), “condition of being worthy, honor, renown”, from weorð (worthy), and -scipe, “state, condition of being”. The sense of “reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being” is first recorded in about 1300. The original sense is preserved in the title worshipful (c.1300). The verb to worship first appears in writing from about 1200. The word weorð comes from the Proto Germanic *werthaz (toward, opposite), which is possibly a derivative of Proto-Indo-European word *wert- (to turn, wind). from *wer- (to turn, bend).

The OED and the Collins Dictionary give the same etymology, and the OED lists the numerous ways worship was written in Middle English, including worðscipe, worðschipe, worðschepe, worþssipe, worþschip, wortscip, wortschyp, worsipe, worssipe, and so on.

The Dictionary of Word Origins says the worship originally meant “worthiness, distinction, credit, dignity” in Old English. Later is came to mean “respect or reverence”, and was used in religious contexts from the 13th century, and that is was used as a verb from the 12th century.

A related word is venerate, from the Latin venerāt- from venerārī/venerāre (to reverence, worship, adore), which comes from venus (beauty, love desire), from the Proto-Indo-European base *wen- (to strive after, wish, desire, be satisfied) [source]. This is also the root of the words for worship in Italian (venerare), Portuguese (venerar) and French (vénérer). The equivalent in Spanish is adorar or rendir culto a.