Category: Words and phrases

Word of the day – rhewlif

By Simon

The Welsh word rhewlif was mentioned during Iolo Willams’ programme, Byd Iolo, on Radio Cymru yesterday. At first I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, but then I realised the word was a compound of rhew (frozen) and llif (flood) and guessed that it meant glacier. He was in Patagonia at the time, so the context helped. It’s great when you can work out what a word means without having to look it up.

Another Welsh word for glacier is afon iâ (ice river). The equivalent in Irish is oighearshruth (ice river/flow) and in Chinese it’s 冰川 (bīng chuān) – ice river.

The English word glacier comes from the France glacier, which is apparently from Savoy dialect word glacière (moving mass of ice) and is related to glace (ice).

Word of the day – optionulsory

By Simon

The term optionulsory was coined by one of my classmates the other day to refer to things that are somewhere between optional and compulsory – in this case the Linguistics Circle Research Seminars. Linguistics postgrads are expected and encouraged to attend these seminars, but are not absolutely obliged to do so.

I went to one of the seminars on Wednesday – quite an interesting talk on Spanish verbs which focused particularly on the preterite tense.

Metonymy

By Simon

Metonymy cropped up in the readings for my Semantics class this week, so I thought I’d write about it here to make sure I understand what it is.

The word metonymy come for the Greek μετωνυμία (metōnymia), which means “a change of name”. A metonym substitutes one word to stand for another that’s connected in some way.

Here are some examples which show some of the ways in which this figure of speech is used:

All hands on deck! – here hands stands for sailors (part for whole)
To fill up the car – the car stands for the petrol/gas tank (whole for part)
I’ll have a Heineken – Heineken stands for beer (producer for product)
No. 10 declined to comment – No. 10 Downing Street in London is the official residence of the British Prime Minister (place for institution)
Can I pay with plastic? – plastic stands for a credit/debit card

The first example is also known as a synecdoche.

These examples are based mainly on those found in An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics by Freidrich Ungerer and Hans-Jörg Schmid.

Word of the day – mezzanine

By Simon

I had my first lecture today, which took place on one of the rooms on the mezzanine floor of the Main Arts building. A mezzanine or entresol is usually an extras floor between main floors of a building. A mezzanine might often projects from the wall like a balcony and may share the same ceiling with the floor below. The term can also be applied to the lowest balcony in a theatre, or for the first few rows of seats in that balcony. The word mezzanine comes via French from the Italian mezzanino, which is derived from mezzano, middle, which itself is from the Latin medianus, of the middle.

The lecture was on semantics and focused on theories of meaning. The lecturer had little time for the formalist view that each word has a core definition independent of context. Instead she explained how the meanings of words and sentences are derived from the context and our knowledge of the world. One exercise we did was to come up with necessary and sufficient conditions for defining pet, friend and bird – quite a challenge.

Word of the day – zeugma

By Simon

A zeugma is a figure of speech that joins two or more clauses together in a way that allows you to omit the key verb or noun in all but one of the clauses. The word comes via Latin from the Greek ζεύγμα (zeugma) – yoke.

Here are examples of different kinds of zeugma:

Prozeugma or Synezeugmenon
The verb in the first part of this zeugma governs subsequent parts.

  • Some people like cats, some dogs, some crocodiles.
  • We ate octopus on Monday, camel on Tuesday and ostrich on Wednesday.
  • I speak sense, you nonsense.

Hypozeugma
In hypozeugmas the verb appear at the end of a number of clauses. This results in a sense of suspense in listeners and readers until they reach the end of the sentence.

  • Neither rain nor fog nor dragons will slow this knight on his quest.
  • Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)

Syllepsis
A syllepsis joins clauses with different meanings together with a common verb, the meaning of which changes for each clauses. It can be used for comic effect due to the unusual connections and ambiguity involved.

  • She went home in a huff and a taxi.
  • I left my heart and my wallet in San Francisco.
  • Don’t forget to put out the cat and the lights before going to bed.
  • He had to eat his words and his lunch.

Word of the day – poc

By Simon

In Welsh a poc (/pok/) or pocyn (/’pokɪn/), is a kiss, however this word is rarely used in everyday speech. The more common word for kiss is cusan (/’kɪsan/) or sws (/sʊs/) and ‘to kiss’ is cusanu.

When I came across the word poc while looking for something else in the dictionary, it immediately reminded me of the Irish word for kiss – póg (/po:g/) and I assumed that they came from the same root. At first I thought the root was a ancient Celtic word, but have since discovered, via MacBain’s Dictionary, that both words come from the Latin pâcem, “the kiss of peace”, a part of the Mass.

There are similar words for kiss in the other Celtic languages: pòg in Scottish Gaelic, paag in Manx and pok in Breton.

Word of the day – macaronic

By Simon

At the end-of-course ceilidh at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, one of the Irish guys read a story which was half in English and half in Irish. It was very funny, if you understood both languages; those who didn’t missed quite a lot. Even speakers of Scottish Gaelic found it quite difficult to understand all the Irish bits, which suggests to me that Irish and Scottish Gaelic aren’t as mutually comprehensible as some claim.

This type of story is called macaronic, a word coined in the 16th century by Teofilo Folengo, an Italian poet, to refer to a type of verse he invented in which he mixed Italian and Latin for comic effect. He based the name on macaroni, which he described in Latin as pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum (a savoury dish bound together with flour, cheese [and] butter, [a dish] which is fat, coarse, and rustic).

The word was first used in English the following century and was used to refer to any type of verse which mixes two or more languages together.

Source: http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-wei1.htm.

Here are links to a few examples of Macaronic songs in English and Irish:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/w/williams/macaronic.htm

Word of the day – cofrestru

By Simon

Today I went up to Bangor Uni to start the process of registering (cofrestru) as a student. I’ve now officially accepted the offer of a place – the letter of offer was sent to me in June, but it seems to have got lost in the post. So I went to the registry (cofrestrfa) to pick up a copy, as well as various other forms that need filling in. Registration (cofrestru) doesn’t actually happen until the end of next month though.

The word cofrestru is a combination of cof, memory, mind, and rhestru, to list, make a list, which comes from rhestr, list, rank, row. Related words include rhestrog, rowed, in rows; and rhestrol, ordinal.

Téacschaint

By Simon

In my Irish language class this morning we learnt some of the abbreviations used in texts messages in Irish.

Here are a few of them:

grma = go raibh maith agat (thank you)
cgl = ceart go leor (ok)
n8 = anocht (tonight)
7n = seachtain (week)
R y leat = ar mhaith leat (do you want)
a #ce = a thaisce (my darling/dear)
9l = níl (not/no)
sgf = slán go fóill (goodbye)

There are some more here.

I’m not a big fan of such abbreviations in Irish, English or other languages, but do quite like the inventiveness of them.