Category: Words and phrases

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.

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].