Category: Words and phrases

Knowledge and seeing

By Simon

I discovered today that there is a connection between the Gaelic word for knowledge, information, news – fios in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, fys in Manx – and the English words video and wit.

Their roots can all be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root woid-/wid- (to see/to know), which, according to the OED, is also the root of words such as the Sanskrit वेदा (veda – knowledge); the Latin vidēre to see); the Welsh gwybod (to know); the Lithuanian véidas (face); and the Greek ἰνδάλλεσθαι (to appear).

The Irish and Scottish Gaelic word fios is also related to the word fionn (white, fair, pale; sincere, true, certain; small; fine, pleasant), which is how I discovered this while putting together a new page of Scottish Gaelic colours – you can see how easily I get distracted. This doesn’t worry me as it’s all very interesting.

Have you been bangalored recently?

By Simon

I listened to an interesting programme of BBC Radio 4 this morning in which there was discussion of some of the new words that have entered the English language recently. One such word is the verb to be bangalored, which is defined on WiseGeek as follows: “To be Bangalored is to be unceremoniously replaced when one’s job is sent overseas.” Bangalore (ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು), the capital of Karnataka State in southern India, is one of the centres of outsourcing.

Another example of a place name being used like this is the expression ‘to be shanghaied’, which Wikipedia defines as ‘the practice of kidnapping men to serve as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps.’ The verb ‘to shanghai’ was used from the 1850s and was a result of Shanghai being a common destination for ships with shanghaied crews.

On the programme they commented that there aren’t many place names that are used in this way. Can you think of any others, in English or other languages?

If your home town / current place of residence were to be used as a verb, what kind of action might it describe?

What could ‘to bangor’ or ‘to be bangored’ mean, I wonder? The latter might refer to the state one achieves after imbibing too many intoxicating beverages – e.g. he was completed bangored last night.

I will be londoning (visiting London) this weekend, and then rebangoring (returning to Bangor).

La gueule enfarinée

By Simon

I discovered an interesting French expression yesterday while ferreting around in the dictionary – la gueule enfarinée, which literally means ‘the floured mouth’, but actually refers to someone who is ‘wet behind the ears’, i.e. new, untrained, inexperienced, immature, innocent, callow or naive (synonyms from The Chambers Thesaurus).

The word gueule usually refers to the mouth of an animal, and is also a slang word for the human mouth, which is normally bouche. Equivalent words in English include gob, mug, snout, cakehole, kisser, trap, etc – do you have any others? It comes from the Old French gole, from the Latin gula (gullet, throat, gluttony, palate), which is also the root of the English word gullet.

Why having a floury mouth is a sign of being inexperienced is a mystery to me. Does anyone know the origins of this expression?

Docent

By Simon

I came across an unfamiliar word today in a book I’m reading – docent. From the context I guessed it referred to someone who leads guided tours, but according to my English dictionary it means ‘(in the U.S.) a lecturer in some colleges and universities’, and it comes from the German word Dozent (associate professor, tutor, academic, lecturer), from the Latin docēns, from docēre (to teach).

According to Wikipedia, ‘Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor (i.e. professor ordinarius). Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach.’ It is used as an academic title in universities in a number of European countries.

There are also museum docents, who guide and educate visitors to museums and other institutions, usually voluntarily.

Have you come across the word docent before? What are such people called, if they exist, in your country?

In the UK they are known as guides.

Sgoinneil

By Simon

When someone asks you ‘Ciamar a tha thu?’ (How are you?) in Scottish Gaelic, the standard answer is ‘(Tha mi) gu math’ (I’m fine). An interesting alternative I learnt today is ‘Tha mi sgoinneil’ [ha mi sgɤn̪ˠʲal]

The word sgoinneil means ‘trim, well-made; careful; cool, groovy’ according to Am Faclair Beag and ‘careful, heedful; attentive; efficacious, producing a good effect; neat, trim, tidy; decent, tasteful; energetic, active, bustling.’ according to Am Faclair Dwelly.

I just like the sound of it and will try to fit it into my Gaelic conversations.

Related words include:

  • neo-sgoinneil = flimsy; drabbish; idle; lacking in bodily vigour; sluggish
  • sgoinnear = heedful
  • mì-sgoinneil = inactive, wanting energy; silly, awkward; careless, inattentive, causing indifference or disdain; incorrect.

Water lilies, nymphs and blue lotuses

By Simon

A nymphaea / water lily

There was talk of ponds and water lilies last night at the French conversation group and I discovered that one French word for water lily is nymphéa [nɛ̃.fe.a], which comes from nymphaea the Latin name for this genus of plants. The Latin word comes from the Ancient Greek word νύμφη (nymphe), which means girl, and also refers to a low ranking female deity who haunts rivers, springs, forests and other places [source].

Nymphéa refers specifially to the white water lily, or nymphaea alba, which also known as the European White Waterlily, White Lotus, or Nenuphar, a name that is also found in French: nénuphar [ne.ny.faʁ], and which comes via the Persian نيلوفر (ninufar) or the Arabic نلوفر (nilufar), from the Sanskrit नीलोतपल (nīlotpala – blue lotus), from नील (nīla – blue-black) and उतपल (utpala – lotus) [source].

Many names for plants in French come directly from Latin, whereas in English many plants have common names and Latin names. In other languages do plants have both common and Latin-derived names, or just one or the other?

Orientating oneself

By Simon

When visiting an unfamiliar place in order to find you way around it helps if you work out where you are in relation to particular landmarks and in which direction you’re facing. In order to use a map you need to know where north is so that you can hold the map the right way round. This process is known as getting ones bearings or orientating / orienting oneself. The verb orient(ate) means to to face or arrange things to face the east (orient) and comes, via French, from the Latin word orient (the eastern part of the world, the part of the sky in which the sun rises, the east, the rising sun, daybreak, dawn). These days we usually orientate ourselves by finding out where north is, so why do we use orient(ate)?

Recently I discovered, in On The Map: Why the world looks the way it does by Simon Garfield, that the use of orient(ate) comes from the the medieval practice of placing Jerusalem in the centre of maps, so lining them up involved making them face towards Jerusalem in the east.

The northern equivalent of orient is boreal (from the Greek βορέας – god of the north wind), so to ‘orientate’ oneself towards the north might be borealate – this word doesn’t exist, but the word borealize (to adopt northern manners or pronunciation) does.

There is also a verb occident, which means “to turn or direct towards the west; to place (a church) with the chancel at the western end.” The southern equivalent of orient is austral, and the verb to australize (to point southward) was once used in English, though no longer.

Source: Oxford English Dictionary

The Nadgery Road to Cemaes

By Simon

On the way to a singing workshop in Cemaes today the word nadgery was used to describe the road. From the context I guessed that it meant winding, but as I hadn’t heard the word before I checked, and was told that it’s a dialect word from the north east of England. It doesn’t appear in the OED or in any other dictionary I’ve looked in, but is used online, often in reference to roads. Have you heard it before, or used it? Do you have others words to describe winding roads?

The Nadgery Road to Cemaes could be the title of a tune and/or a song. Maybe I’ll try to write one using it. There is a song called The Rocky Road to Dublin, after all.

Schnick, Schnack, Schnuck

By Simon

Schnick, Schnack, Schnuck

Last weekend a couple of couchsurfers from the USA stayed with me. When they’re not surfing from sofa to sofa they live in Leipzig in Germany and one of them speaks German fluently. When she discovered that I also speak German, we started chatting in German. Even after many years of neglect my German is still there, although I often flail around for words and my grammatical knowledge is rusty. I learnt some interesting expressions, including:

  • Schnick, Schnack, Schnuck = Rock-paper-scissors (game)
  • (der) Streber = geek, nerd
  • streberhaft = geekiness, nerdiness
  • (die) Kneipe = pub
  • innerer Schweinehund = one’s weaker self; inner temptation; procrastination

According to Wikipedia the game rock, paper, scissors is also known as Schere, Stein, Papier; Ching, Chang, Chong; Klick, Klack, Kluck; Stein schleift Schere; Schnibbeln, Knobeln oder Schniekern in German. Apparently alternative names for this game in English include roshambo, Paper-Scissors-Stone and ick-ack-ock – have you heard of these?

The game originally comes from China and was first mentioned in a book by 谢肇淛 (Xie Zhaozhi) during the Ming Dynasty (c. 1600), who said that game dates back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) and calls it 手势令 (shoushiling) or “hand command”.

What do you call this game?

Math math

By Simon

This week I discovered that you can emphasize adjectives in Scottish Gaelic by repeating them. For example:
– bha e math math air faclan a chur ri chèile ann am bàrdachd (he was very good at putting words togther in poetry).

Emphasis can also be indicated with glé (very) – bha e glé mhath – with uabhasach (terribly) – bha e uabhasach math – or with fiadhaich (wild) – bha e fiadhaich math. Another example, which is mentioned in Leabher nan Litrichean by Ruairidh MacIlleathain, concerns an overheard conversation between two boys. One says “An robh an t-isag mòr?” (Was the fish big?), and the other replies, “Bha! Bha e mòr mòr mòr mòr mòr!”. (Yes! It was very very very very big!).

This doubling isn’t very common in English, though some people might use it. Alternatively you can elongate the adjective, it was biiiiig!. Do you double or enlongate adjectives at all, in English or other languages?