Category: Words and phrases

Peithiau a maip

By Simon

Recently I heard about a series of programmes on S4C (the Welsh language TV channel) presented by the naturalist Iolo Williams, in which he visits Native American communities and learns about their cultures, languages and the natural world around them. The programmes are in Welsh, apart from odd bits of English and Native American languages, and subtitles in English or Welsh are available.

In the programme I just watched, which focuses on the Lakota, Iolo uses a number of Welsh words I hadn’t heard before:

– paith (pl. peithiau) = prairie
– ci y paith (pl. cŵn y paith) = prairie dog
– meipen (pl. maip) = turnip – in this context a type of wild food found on the prairie – psoralea esculenta*
– toddi = to melt – here it is used in the context of taming wild horses

Other Welsh words for prairie include gwastatir (“level land”) and gweundir (“grass (?) land”).

The English word prairie comes from the French prairie, from the Old French praerie, from Vulgar Latin *prataria, from Latin pratum (meadow – originally “a hollow”). The existed as prayere in Middle English, but fell out of use, and then was reborrowed from French to describe the American plains, where immigrants wagons where known as “prairie schooners” [source].

*Psoralea esculenta – a herbaceous perennial plant native to prairies and dry woodlands of central North America with an edible starchy tuberous root. English names for the plant include tipsin, teepsenee, breadroot, breadroot scurf pea, pomme blanche, and prairie turnip, and the Lakota name is Timpsula [source].

Diolch i Siôn Jobbins am yr awgrym

Mice, muscles and mussels

By Simon

Larry, the official mouser at 10 Downing Street

Today I came across the German word Mäusefänger (mouse catcher) in an article, sent to me by a friend, about the cat that recently took up the position of chief mouse catcher at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of British Prime Minister David Cameron. Number 10 apparently has a bit of a problem with mice, and there’s a long tradition of keeping cats at the prime minister’s residence and the treasury.

Mäusefänger is made up of two words: mäuse, the plural of maus (mouse), and fänger (catcher, fielder, interceptor, trap). Maus, which is of course related to the English word mouse, comes from the Proto-Germanic. *mus (a small rodent), from PIE *muHs- (mouse) [source]. The word muscle comes from the same root, via the Latin musculus (muscle, lit. “little mouse”), as does mussel, via the Old English muscle/musscel, and the Late Latin muscula [source].

While looking up some of the words in the article, I came across a useful German dictionary, canoonet, which not only gives information about German words (in German), and links to dictionaries for other languages, but also has grammatical information, such as noun and verb conjugations. There is also a Morphologie-Browser, which shows the words derived from a particular word – here’s an example with the word sehen (to see).

Spolubydlící

By Simon

I came across the Czech word spolubydlící [ˈspɔlʊbidliːtsiː] on a blog I read today and was pleased to realise that I could work out what it meant from its constituent parts. Spolu means together, byd is related to bydlet (to live), I didn’t know what lící signified, but correctly guessed that the word meant “house mate / roommate”.

I learnt spolu (together, along with, jointly, in company with) yesterday in the Czech lesson I was working my way through. It appears in the context, Musíme si někdy spolu zahrát (We must have a game together sometime). I’d come across bydlet before in such expressions as Bydlím v Praze (I live in Prague) and Bydlíte tu někde blízko? (Do you live somewhere near here?).

Other words containing spolu include:

  • spoluautor – co-author
  • spolucestující – travel companion, fellow traveller, passenger
  • spoluhráč – playmate, team mate
  • spolumajitel – co-owner, joint owner
  • spoluobčan – fellow-citizen
  • spolupráce – cooperation

By the way, what do you call someone you live with or share a house, flat, apartment, room or other dwelling with?

I would say house mate for someone you share a house with, flat mate for someone you share a flat with, and room mate for someone you share a room with.

Skiving

By Simon

When you spend your time not doing what you should be doing, you could be said to be skiving [‘skaɪvɪŋ]. This applies especially to taking unofficial time off school, or at least it was the expression used when I was at (secondary) school in the 1980s, not that I ever indulged in it. It is also used to describe the avoiding work and others things you should be doing.

Other ways of describing this practice include playing truant, doing a bunk and bunking off. I’ve also heard some people using mitching or mitching off for this, and I think you can ‘dog’ school in Scotland. In the USA do you skip or cut class/school or play hooky?

The etymology of skive, as in to play truant / avoid work, is uncertain, but skive has another meaning: to split or cut into strips, which comes from the Old Norse skifa [source].

Here’s a good example of attempted skiving:

A mother repeatedly called upstairs for her son to get up, get dressed and get ready for school. It was a familiar routine, especially at exam time.

“I feel sick,” said the voice from the bedroom.

“You are not sick. Get up and get ready,” called the mother, walking up the stairs and hovering outside the bedroom door.

“I hate school and I’m not going,” said the voice from the bedroom, “I’m always getting things wrong, making mistakes and getting told off. Nobody likes me, and I’ve got no friends. And we have too many tests and they are too confusing. It’s all just pointless, and I’m not going to school ever, ever again.”

“I’m sorry, but you are going to school,” said the mother through the door. She decided to try a bit of encouragement, “Really, mistakes are how we learn and develop. And please try not to take criticism so personally. I can’t believe that nobody likes you – you have lots of friends at school. And yes, all those tests can be confusing, but we are all tested in many ways throughout our lives, so all of this experience at school is useful for life in general. Besides, you have to go, you are the headmaster.” [Source]

Are there other words for this practice in English or other languages?

肚皮舞 (dù​pí​wǔ​)

By Simon

The other day I discovered that the Mandarin word for belly dancing is 肚皮舞 (dù​pí​wǔ​). As I knew the meanings of the individual characters, I could guess the meaning of the word, even though I hadn’t heard it before. 肚 (dù​​) is stomach or belly, 皮 (​pí​​) is skin, and 舞 (wǔ​) is dance.

I don’t remember seeing 肚 (dù​​) written down before, though was familiar with the phrase “我肚子饿” (wǒ​ dù​zi​ è) = I’m hungry (lit. “I belly hungry”). According to the MDBG Chinese dictionary, 肚 (dù) means belly, 肚 (dǔ​) means tripe, and 肚子 (dù​zi​) means belly / abdomen / stomach.

Related words and expressions include:

  • 肚臍 [肚脐] (dù​qí) / 肚臍眼 (dù​qí​yǎn​) – navel
  • 肚子痛 (dù​zi​tòng​) / 肚痛 (dù​tòng)​ – stomach ache / belly-ache
  • 大肚子 (dà​dù​zi) -​pregnant (“big belly”)
  • 爆肚 (bào​dǔ​) – deep fried tripe
  • 眼饞肚飽 (yǎn​chán​dù​bǎo) – to have eyes bigger than one’s belly (“eyes greedy belly full”)
  • 鼠肚雞腸 (shǔ​dù​jī​cháng​) – small-minded (“rat/mouse belly chicken intestines”)
  • 將軍肚子 (jiāng​jūn​dù​zi​) – beer belly (“general’s belly” – complimentary)
  • 香羊肚 (xiāng​yáng​dù​) – haggis (“fragrant sheep belly”)

Another word for stomach is 腹 (fù​) – abdomen, belly, stomach.ng

Cave canem!

By Simon

Carea Castellano

I received a email today asking when the Spanish word perro (dog) replaced can, a word for dog derived from the Latin canis, which appears in the name Canary Islands, (Islas Canarias in Spanish).

The Spanish word perro first appeared in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española in 1737 [source]; was originally pejorative [source] and is possibly of onomatopoeic origin from the growling sounds made by dogs, perr perr (sounds more like a cat’s purr to me). Shepherds also used that sound to call their dogs. Another possibility is that perro comes from a pre-Roman language [source].

In Spanish the word can was used for dog until about the 14th century, after which it was gradually replaced by perro. The words for dog in most other Romance languages come from the Latin word canis: cane (Italian), chien (French), câine (Romanian), cão (Portuguese), can (Galician). One exception is Catalan, in which the word for dog is gos. [source].

The root of the Latin word canis, which appears in biological name for the subspecies of dogs: canis lupus familiaris, comes from the Proto-Indo-European base *kwon- (dog). This is also the root of the English hound (via the Proto-Germanic *khundas and the Old English hund), the English canine, the Greek κυων (kuōn), the German hund, the Irish cu and the Welsh ci [source].

The English word dog comes from the Old English docga, a word of unknown origin which was probably the name of a particular breed of dog, and had largely replaced the word hound as the general term for dog by the 16th century [source]. Hound started to be used to mean “a dog used for hunting” from the 12th century [source].

The name Islas Canarias probably comes from the Latin Insula Canaria (Island of the Dogs), which was originally just the name of Gran Canaria. It is possible that the dogs referred to were seals [source].

Gargalesthesia, gongoozler and misodoctakleidism

By Simon

Here are a few unusual and interesting words that I came across today on this page that I thought I’d share with you.

gargalesthesia [ˈgɑːɡəlɪsθiːzɪə] – the sensation caused by tickling, from the Greek gargalos (itching) + esthesia. A medical term that also exists in French (gargalésie). The word gargalos also means bottleneck in Portuguese. Related words include gargalesis (heavy tickling) and knismesis (light tickling).

ginglyform [ˈɡɪŋɡlɪfɔːm] – hinge-shaped, from the Greek ginglumos (a hinge). A medical term used to refer to types of joints such as knee and elbow joints. Related words include ginglymus (a hinge joint), and ginglymoid (a hinge-like movement). [Source]

gongoozler [ɡɒnˈguːzlə] – an idle spectator, especially one who enjoys idly watching activity on canals. It is thought to come from canal workers’ slang, possibly from the Lincolnshire dialect words gawn and gooze, which both mean to stare or gape [source]

misodoctakleidist – someone who hates practising the piano [I can’t find any more information about this word]

mytacism [miːˈtəsɪzˌəm]- excessive use of or fondness for, or incorrect use of the letter M and the sound it represents [source]. Another definition of this medical term is “stammering in which the letter M is frequently substituted for other consonants.” [source].

When I come across lists of words like this I find it interesting to check the usage and etymology of the words – they are often obscure medical terms from Greek that are rarely if ever heard in everyday conversation, but are interesting nonetheless.

Hands and pockets

By Simon

In English when you know something or somewhere well, you can say that you “know it like the back of your hand” or that you “know it inside out / back to front / upside down”. If you’re talking about people, you might say “I know him/her/them like I know myself.”

Yesterday I learnt that the equivalent idiom in French is “Je le connais comme ma poche” (I know it like my pocket) or “Je le connais comme le fond de ma poche” (I know it like the bottom of my pocket).

In Spanish the equivalent is “Lo/la conozco como la palma de mi mano” (I know it like the palm of my hand), and in Turkish it also the palm of the hand that is best known: “Avcumun içi gibi biliyorum” (I know it like the palm of my hand).

The German equivalent is “Ich kenne es wie meine Westentasche” (I know it like my waistcoat pocket).

What about in other languages?

Taverns, columns and caps

By Simon

What do the words in the title of this post have in common?

Well, they all originally come from Etruscan, according to Nicholas Ostler in Ad Infinitum – A Biography of Latin and the World it Created, one of the books I’m reading at the moment.

The English word tavern dates from the late 13th century, when it meant “wine shop”, and later came to mean “public house”. It comes from the Old French taverne, (shed made of boards; booth; stall; tavern; inn), from the Latin taberna (shop, inn, tavern) – originally “hut or shed”, from Etruscan [source]. The Greek word ταβέρνα (taverna) comes the Latin [source].

Column comes from the Old French colombe (column, pillar), from the Latin columna (pillar), which the Online Etymology Dictionary says is a collateral form of columen (top, summit), from the Proto-Indo-European base *kel- (to project), but which Nicholas Ostler believes comes from Etruscan.

Cap comes from the Old English cæppe (hood, head-covering, cape), from the Late Latin cappa (a cape, hooded cloak), which is possibly a shortened from capitulare (headdress) from caput (head) [source], or from the Etruscan.

Other Latin words that are thought to come from Etruscan include voltur (vulture), ātruim (forecourt), fenestra (window), caseus (cheese), culīna (kitchen), tuba (trumpet), urna (urn), mīles (soldier), Aprīlis (April), autumnus (autumn) and laburnum (shrub).

Bellies, bags and bellows

By Simon

Yesterday a friend asked me whether bellyache was considered rude or vulgar, and whether tummy ache or stomach ache were preferable in formal conversation. I thought that the word belly might be seen as vulgar and/or informal by some; that stomach ache might be better in formal situations, and that tummy ache tends to be used by and with children. Would you agree?

Belly comes from the Old English belg (bag, purse, bellows, pod, husk), from the Proto-Germanic*balgiz (bag), from the PIE base *bhelgh- (to swell), which is also the root of the Old Norse belgr (bag, bellows) and bylgja (billow); the Gothic balgs (wineskin), the Welsh bol (belly, paunch), the Irish bolg (abdomen, bulge, belly, hold, bloat), and the Latin bulga (leather sack). The English words bellows, billow, bolster, budget and bulge also come from the same root [source].

In English belly came to refer to the body during the 13th century, and the abdomen during the 14th century. By the late 16th century its meaning had been extended to cover the bulging part or concave convex surface of anything. In the late 18th century some people in England decided that belly was vulgar and banished it from speech and writing – replacing it with stomach or abdomen. [source].