Category: Words and phrases

Sneck

By Simon

Sneck /snɛk/ is a word I discovered the other day that means a door or gate latch, the lever that raises the bar of a latch, or a catch. It also means nose or cut. It’s used mainly in northern England and Scotland and is featured in the name of the beer, Sneck Lifter, from Cumbria. It comes from the Middle English word snekk(e), which is of obscure origin. It is possibly related to snick, and the Norwegian and Icelandic snikka (to carve, whittle).

Related expressions include, to draw a sneck (to act cunningly or stealthily); to leave (a door) on/off the sneck (to leave (a door) on/off the latch); sneck-bend (a type of fish hook); sneck posset (a cold reception or greeting; a discharge or dismissal); sneck drawer (one who draws or lifts a sneck or latch (in order to enter stealthily); a crafty, flattering, or sly fellow).

Sources: OED, Wikitionary

Telling tales

By Simon

Earlier this week I went to a Christmas show entitled Beasts and Beauties in Kendal. It wasn’t a traditional Christmas pantomime, though did include some pantomimesque elements, but rather a series of eight fairy/folk tales from around Europe, including:

– The Emperor’s New Clothes or Kejserens nye Klæder by Hans Christian Andersen (Danish)
– Bluebeard or La Barbe bleue by Charles Perrault (French)
– The Juniper Tree or Von dem Machandelboom a story collected by the Brothers Grimm in Low German
– The Girl and the North Wind (Norwegian). This one was originally The Lad who went to the North Wind or Gutten som gikk til nordavinden

It was all in English in various accents with occasional words in the other languages, and was well put together and acted.

It’s interesting to see the original texts of these tales and to discover the ways they start, which tend to be formulaic – the equivalents of the English ‘Once upon a time’. For example stories might start with ‘For mange Aar siden …’ in Danish, ‘Il était une fois …’ in French, ‘Dat is nu all lang heer …‘ in Low German, ‘Det var engang …‘ in Norwegian,

Such stories are usually referred to as fairy tales/stories or folk tales/stories. The word tale comes from the Old English talu (story, tale), from the Old Germanic *talō, from the Proto-Indo-European root *del- (to recount, count), which is also the root of talk, tell, tall and teller, which arrived via Old Norse, as well as the Dutch word taal (speech), the German word zahl (number) and the Danish tale (speech) [source].

Gala

By Simon

Last week I went to an event described as a ‘gala concert’ at Bangor University. A friend asked what gala actually means; I wasn’t sure, so decided to find out.

According to the OED, gala (/ˈgaːlə/, /ˈgeɪlə/) means “gala dress, festal attire”; “a festive occasion; a festival characterized by the display of finery and show” or “festive, gay” (chiefly North America). It comes from the French word gala (official reception).

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, gala comes from the French en gala, which perhaps comes from the Old French gale (merriment), from galer (rejoice, make merry).

Shaking paillasses

By Simon

In French une paillasse /pajas/ is a straw mattress, draining board or laboratory bench and un paillasse is a clown. The former is a combination of paille (straw) plus the suffix -asse. Paille comes from the Latin palea, from the Ancient Greek πάλλω (pallo = to shake) because you have to shake the straw to extract the grain. The latter comes from the Italian pagliaccio (clown).

The word paillasse /ˈpalɪas/, meaning a straw mattress, is also used in English and was used in Scots.

Paillasse also appears in des pommes (de terre) paillasses, a potato-based dish which came up in a quiz yesterday.

Sources: Wiktionnaire, OED, Reverso

Dros ben llestri

By Simon

The Welsh idiom, dros ben llestri (literally, “over (the) dishes/crockery”), means ‘over the top’, as in excessive, exaggerated or beyond reasonable limits. The phrase dros ben on its own means “residual, spare; extra, extremely, indeed, over”. I’m not sure how this phrase came to be associated with exaggeration.

In French there are a number of ways to express the same concept:
– (être) exagéré / trop / délirant(e) = (to be) over the top (excessive)
– encenser = to go over the top (praise excessively)
– en faire trop / en faire des tonnes / aller trop loin / dépasser les bornes = to go over the top (do sth excessively)

encenser also means ‘to praise by burning incense (l’encens)’.

Here are a few examples of usage:

– Votre réaction est exagérée = Their reaction was well over the top
= Mi aeth eu ymateb dros ben llestri

– L’Eurovision, c’est vraiment trop ! = Eurovision is so fantastically over the top
= Mae Eurovision yn hollol dros ben llestri

– Cette fois, il dépasse vraiment les bornes ! = This time he’s really gone too far / over the top!
= Y tro ‘ma, mae o ‘di mynd dros ben llestri yn wir.

The English expression over the top first appeared in print in 1965, and the acronym OTT made its first appearance in 1982 in the Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, according to the OED.

Sources: WordReference.com, OED

How do you express the same idea in other languages?

Ordinosore

By Simon

Ordinosore is an interesting French word I came across today in an article in The Guardian. It combines ordinateur (computer) and dinosaur and means an out-of-date computer – the laptop I’m writing this on is only three years old, but is already a bit of an ordinosore.

The article mentions le Festival XYZ, an annual event started in 2002 by Éric Donfu to celebrate new words in French and to breath life into the language.

Other words from the festival include:
– phonard – someone who is always on their mobile phone (pejorative)
– bonjoir – a combination of bonjour (good day) and bonsoir (good evening) used at around midday
– attachiant(e) – a combination of attachant (captivating, endearing) and chiant (annoying) that means someone you cannot live with but cannot live without
– bête seller -a particularly awful literary work that becomes an instant hit (bête = stupid, silly).

Are there similar words or festivals in other languages / countries?

Книга

By Simon

Книга /’kniga/ is a Russian word for book, and also appears in other Slavic languages: кніга in Belarusian, книга in Bulgarian, Macedonian and Ukrainian, knjiga in Croatian and Slovenian, kniha in Czech, knéga in Kashubian, kъńiga (book, character, writing) in Old Church Slavonic, książka in Polish, and књига in Serbian.

It apparently comes from the Proto-Slavic *kъniga, from Old Turkic *küinig, from the Bulgaric Turkic *küiniv, from the Uyghur kuin, kuinbitig (book-spool/scroll), possibly from the Chinese 經 (jīng in Mandarin, *kˤeŋ in Old Chinese = classics, sacred book, scripture). It is possibly also related to:

Armenian: kniќ (slab, letter)
Assyrian: kuniku (slab, document)
Hungarian: könyv (book)
Korean: 권 (kwen – book)
Mordvin: końov (paper)
Sumerian: kunukku (seal, stamp)

If all these words are indeed related, it’s possible that they come from a common source – maybe Chinese, as paper was invented in China in about the 1st century AD, and books sometime after that. Are there any similar words in other languages?

La douce lueur du crépuscule

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered that there are many ways to express the concept of soft in French, depending on the context.

Doux (douce) (/du/, /duːs/), from the Latin dulcis (soft, smooth, pleasant), is used for:
– soft (not rough) skin, hands, hair, fur, silk, towels, fabric or texture
– soft (gentle) lights, colours, curves, lines, breezes and rain;
– soft (not loud) voices, music and voices
– soft (not hard) water
– soft (easy) life

For example
– la douce lueur du crépuscule (the soft glow of the evening light)
– Sa voix se fit plus douce (Her voice grew softer)

mou (molle) (/mu/, /mɔl/), from the Latin mollis (soft), is used for:
– soft (not hard) ground, snow, butter, bread

tendre (/tɑ̃dʁ/), is used for
– soft (not hard) wood
– soft (kind) heart

douillet(te) (/dujɛ/) and moelleux(-euse) (/mwɛ.lø/) are used for:
soft (not hard) beds, cushions and pillows

Douillet is also used to mean soft, as in not physically tough.

indulgent(e) (/ɛ̃dylʒɑ̃/) is used to mean lenient / soft.

If you have a soft spot for someone you could say, ‘j’ai un faible pour qn’.

To say someone is soft in the sense that they’re emotionally sensitive, the word is sensible (/sɑ̃sibl(ə)/). For example, Ne sois pas si douillet!, Ne sois pas si sensible! = Don’t be so soft!

Os

By Simon

Yesterday I discovered that the French word for bone, os, is pronounced /ɔs/ in the singular, as I suspected, but /o/ in the plural [source]. Os is also used in English as a zoological and medical term for bone and is pronounced /ɒs/ (UK) or /ɑs/ (US). Final consonants of French words aren’t usually pronounced, unless followed by a word beginning with a vowel, so you just have to memorise ones like os.

Os appears in such words and expressions as:
– ossature /ɔsatyʀ/ = frame(work), skeletal/bone structure
– osselet /ɔslɛ/ = knucklebone, ossicle (small bone in the middle ear), osselet (small animal bone)
– osseux /ɔsø/ = bone, osseus, bony
– ossification = ossification
– ossifier /ɔsifje/ = to ossify (to harden, make into bone)
– ossuaire /ɔsɥɛʀ/ = ossuary (receptacle or place for the bones of the dead)

– c’est un paquet / sac d’os = he’s a bag of bones, he’s skin and bone
– mouillée / trempé jusqu’aux os = to be soaked to the skin, wet through
– donner un os à ronger à qn = to give sb something to keep them out of mischief (or) keep them quiet
– l’avoir dans l’os = to be done, to get egg all over one’s face (slang)
– il y a un os = there’s a snag / hitch
– tomber sur un os = to come across a snag

Os comes from the Latin os (bone), from the ancient Greek ὀστέον (bone), which is also the root of the prefix osteo-, and is not to be confused with ōs /ɔːs/, (mouth, face, entrance).

In Welsh os means ‘if’.