Category: Words and phrases

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’.

Doxastic

By Simon

I came across the word doxastic (/dɒkˈsæstɪk/) today in Being Wrong – Adventures in the Margin of Error by Katryn Schulz. It means “pertaining to beliefs” and appears in the expression used in philosophy, ‘First Person Constraint on Doxastic Explanation’, or as Schulz terms it ”Cuz It’s True Constraint’. It means that we have only a limited number of ways to explain why we believe what we do.

We often believe things to be self-evidently true without necessarily being explain why or to provide reasons. For example, you might be convinced that your method or system for learning languages works and anybody who doesn’t agree just needs to be convinced of this. You might have invested a lot of time and money to develop and promote your system, so it’s in your interest to believe that the system works. You might not be consciously aware of this, but such things are often obvious in methods and systems developed by others.

Doxastic comes from the Greek δοξαστικ-ός (forming opinion, conjectural), from δοξαστής (conjecturer), from δοξάζ-ειν (to conjecture) [source].

The dox part, from the Greek δόξα (opinion, glory), also appears in such words as paradox – para comes from the Greek παρά (by the side of, beside, past, beyond), so it means ‘beyond belief’, and orthodox – ortho comes from the Greek ὀρθο- (straight, right), so it means ‘right belief’.

Dox is also internet slang for personal details (name, address, etc) that are visible online.

Mountweazels

By Simon

Modified mountain weasel

Today I discovered the wonderful word mountweazel today while listening to The Museum of Curiosity on BBC Radio 4. A mountweazel is a fake or fictitious entry added to a dictionary, encyclopaedia, map or other reference work as a kind of copyright trap – if such entries are found in copies, then its clear that they are copies.

The word mountweazel was coined by The New Yorker magazine and comes from a ficititous entry in the New Columbia Encyclopedia (1975 edition) for a Lilian Virginia Mountweazel. Another name for this is nihil article, which first appear in as Nihilartikel in the German version of Wikipedia.

On maps fictitious streets and place are inserted as copyright trap. The former are known as “trap streets” and the later “phantom settlements” or “paper towns”. One example is the non-existent town of Agloe in New York State.

More information about and examples of mountweazels

Gilets et camisoles

By Simon

Last night at the French Conversation Group we were discussing various words for clothing in French. One word the seems to cover quite a few different types of clothing is gilet /ʒi.lɛ/, which on its own means a sleeveless jacket similar to a waistcoat (vest in American English), and apparently comes from the Maghrebi Arabic word jalikah (a type of jacket worn by Christian slaves in galleys) which comes from the Turkish word yelek (sleeveless jacket; wing feather) [from: Wikitionnaire, Wikitionary and turkishdictionary.net].

Gilet also appears in:
– gilet pareballes = bulletproof jacket/vest; flak jacket (AmEng)
– gilet de sauvetage = life jacket (BrEng) / life preserver / Mae West (AmEng)
– gilet de peau / gilet de corps = vest (BrEng), undershirt (AmEng)
– gilet matelassé = body warmer
– aller pleurer dans le gilet de qqn = to cry on someone’s shoulder

Gilet /ʒile/ is also used in English to mean “a bodice shaped like, or in imitation of, a man’s waistcoat” [source].

In British English the word vest usually refers to a garment, usually sleeveless, worn under one’s shirt, or undershirt in American English. While in American English a vest is a sleeveless piece of clothing with buttons down the front worn over a shirt and under a suit jacket, or waistcoat in British English. So in British English a three-piece suit consists of a jacket, waistcoat and trousers, while in American English these garments are a jacket, vest and pants. I’m sure there are regional variations in these names, as well as in the types of garments they refer to.

Another word that came up was camisole /ka.mi.zɔl/, which in French means “une sorte de vêtement du matin, court, à manches, qui se porte sur la chemise” (a type of morning clothing, short, with sleeves, that is worn on the shirt), and comes from the Provencal word camisola, which comes from the Italian camisciola, a diminutive of camisa (shirt) [from: Wikitionnaire].

In English camisole /ˈkæmɪsəʊl/ can refer to:
– a type of jacket or jersey with sleeves;
– a loose jacket worn by women when dressed in negligée*;
– an underbodice, often embroidered and trimmed with lace;
– a strait-jacket**
[source].

* ‘in negligée‘ = dressed in informal or unceremonious attire. In French négligé (adj) means ‘slovenly, scruffy, untidy, unkempt, slipshod, frowzy, floppy’; and en tenue négligée means ‘in casual clothing’ [source].

** strait-jacket = camisole de force in French.