Category: Words and phrases

Haddock and Églefin

By Simon

Haddock / Églefin

Last night I discovered that the French word for haddock is églefin or aiglefin, but when smoked it’s called haddock, which is also spelled hadock and hadot. Other French names for the unsmoked fish include aigrefin, Âne, Ânon, Bourricot and Saint-Pierre.

The French églefin/aiglefin comes from the Latin aeglefinus, which in made up of aegle from the Greek αἴγλη (light, radiance, glory), and finus.

Haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus), is apparently also known as offshore hake in English, and the word haddock is thought to come from the Middle English haddok, the Anglio-Norman hadoc and the Old French hadot, the origins of which are uncertain.

Another word I learnt last night was houblon [‘ublɔ̃], which is French for hops (humulus lupulus), and I just like the sound of it.

Snickets and robots

By Simon

Today’s word, snicket [‘snɪkɪt], is a narrow passage between buildings, walls or fences in some parts of northern England. It’s origins are shrouded in mystery.

There are quite a few other words for such passages, including: gennel/ginnel/jennel [‘dʒɛnəl, ‘dʒɪnəl, ‘gɪnəl], vennel, bunnyrun, close, wynd, jitty, alley, alleyway, passage, passageway, entry, lane, laneway, twitten and twitchel.

Do you have any others?

Source: languagehat

I’m listening to Fry’s English Delight while writing this and just discovered that traffic lights are called robot in South Africa.

Snigs and Snegs

By Simon

The word snig came up in conversation with a friend who came to fix some of my doors last week. They weren’t closing properly and he sawed and planed bits of them. We found that the catch doesn’t work in one of them, but the lock, a small metal slidding one, does. My friend told me that such locks are called snigs, a word I hadn’t heard before and which I can’t find in any of the dictionaries I’ve checked. Maybe it’s a dialect word.

A similar word that is perhaps related is sneg, which is what the window fitters called the metal protrusions that slide out to lock the windows in place.

Have any of you heard of either of these words?

Do you have other words for these kinds of locks?

Word of the day – paldies

By Simon

Yesterday I learnt how to say thank you in Latvian – paldies /pal’dies/ – from the Latvian lads who delivered and installed my new garden shed. Although they didn’t speak much English, we managed to communicate. When I asked where they were from, they didn’t understand the question, then one of them said, “oh, what country?” and they told me Latvia.

In situations like this when I find myself speaking to people whose language I don’t know and who don’t speak much English, I tend to feel frustrated. Not by their limited English, but by the fact that I don’t know any of their language. It also helps to try saying things in various ways until you find one they understand, as the “Where are you from?” example demonstrates.

Looking at the Latvian phrases on Omniglot, it strikes me that hardly any words look familiar, apart from the lab part of labdien (good afternoon) and labvakar (good evening), which resembles the Lithuanian word labas, which is used for hello, and in such phrases as Laba diena (good afternoon) and labas vakaras (good evening), both of which are similar to the Latvian versions. The words dien (day) and vakar (evening) also resemble their equivalents in Slavic languages such as Czech – den and večer,and Russian – день (den’) and вечер (večer).

Are any of you learning Latvian or planning to learn it?

Paint colours

By Simon

Last week I looked at quite a few paint colours, trying to decide which ones to use in my house, and found the names given to the different colours interesting.

As there are so many different colours, paint manufacturers use various whys to describe them.

Whites, for example, come in many shades, including:

  • Pure Brilliant White, Strong White, All White, Great White, Just White, Aged White, Stone White, Milk White, Cream White, House White, Lime White, Off-White, and so on

Some paints have more imaginative names, such as:

  • Whites: Tallow, String, Slipper Satin, Cupcake, Piglet, Mittens, Straw, Seagull, Fresh Air and Cupboard Love
  • Pinks and Reds: Tutu, Lucy’s Scarf, Pink-a-boo and Riding Hood
  • Oranges, Yellows and Browns: Flower Pot, Humpty Dumpty, Freckle, Cocoa Pod and Muddy Boots
  • Blues and Greens: Polka Dot, Milk Jug, Teacup, Bandstand, Whisper of Dramatic, Urban Obsession and Cricket

Some of the colours in the Earth Born paint range

What I’ve found is that the same name might be used from different colours. For example, straw is a creamy colour from one paint company, and an orangey-brown colour from another.

I’ve chosen a colour called warm blue for my bedroom, water, a lighter blue, for my music room (the spare bedroom), and buttermilk, a lightish yellow, for my bathroom. The rest of the house is painted magnolia, a kind of creamy-white colour.

Do paint colours have interesting names in other languages?

Carpets and harvests

By Simon

I moved into my new house yesterday and am currently having new carpets fitted, which got me wondering about the origins of the word carpet.

Carpet has been traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *kerp- (to pluck, gather, harvest) via the Old French carpite (heavy decorated cloth), the Middle Latin carpita (thick woolen cloth) the past participle of the Latin carpere (to card, pluck).

*kerp- is also the root of the English word harvest, the Greek καρπός (karpos – fruit, grain, produce, harvest, children, poetry [fruit of the mind], profit); and the Irish ciorraigh (to cut, hack, maim).

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary and Wiktionary.

Fascinator

By Simon

An example of a fascinator

I learnt a new word from the radio this morning – fascinator. They were talking about hats and somebody mentions the fascinator, something I hadn’t heard of before.

A fascinator or facinator hat is: “a small headpiece usually mounted on a base, comb or headband worn jauntily to the front or side incorporating a combination of feathers, flowers, coils, curls and other trimmings.” [Source]

Apparently the fascintor was originally a fine, lacy head covering made of wool or lace and like a shawl. It went out of fashion in the 1970s, but has made a come-back recently in a different form. They are almost exclusively worn by women, especially to special occasions like weddings and big race meetings such as Ascot. [Source]

Winter climber

By Simon

Zimolez (Lonicera periclymenum - Common honeysuckle - Zimolez ovíjivý)

The word zimolez, which is honeysuckle in Czech, came up the other day during a conversation with a Czech friend. It comes from zima (winter) and lézt (to climb, crawl, creep), so could be translated as “winter climber”.

Other interesting words that came up include plšík (doormouse), smršť (tornado) brblat (to grizzle, beef, grouch, mutter) and žbrblat (to mutter to oneself). The root smršť also appears in words related to shrinking and contracting, such as smrštit (to shrink), smrštěný (contracted, shrunk) and smršťovací fólie (shrink wrap).

What delicious consonant clusters!

The English name honeysuckle comes from the Old English hunigsuge (honey-suck). An alternative name is Eglantine, which comes from the Old French aiglent (dog rose), from the Vulgar Latin aquilentus (rich in prickles), from the Latin aculeus (spine, prickle), a diminutive of acus (needle)

Names for honeysuckle in other languages include:

  • German: Geißblatt (goat leaf)
  • French: Chèvrefeuille (goat leaf)
  • Irish: Féithleann (vein ale ?)
  • Italian: Caprifoglio (goat leaf)
  • Latin: Lonicera
  • Spanish: Madreselva (mother jungle)
  • Welsh: Gwyddfid (wild hedge ?) or Llaeth y gaseg (mare’s milk)

Wire twists

By Simon

The electricians have been rewiring my new house this week and finished today, so I thought it would be interesting to looking the etymology of the word wire.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, wire comes from the Old English word wir (metal drawn out into a thread), which is related to the Old Norse word viravirka (filigree work), the Swedish word vira (to twist), and the Old High German word wiara (fine gold work).

Going further back we find that the Proto-Indo-European root of wire and wir is *wei- (to turn, twist, plait). This is also the root of the Old Irish word fiar (bent, crooked – cam in Modern Irish); the Welsh word gwyr (bent, crooked); and the Latin viere (to bend, twist).

The Proto-Indo-European Etymology dictionary gives the PIE root of wire as *chislom.

There are quite a few idiomatic expressions involving wire, including:

  • the wire – another for the telephone, and the name of a TV series
  • down the wire – right up to the last moment
  • get in under the wire – to accomplish something with little time to spare
  • get one’s wires crossed – to misunderstand
  • pull wires – to exert influence behind the scenes using personal connections, etc – also ‘pull strings’
  • wire in – to set about (something, especially food) with enthusiasm (not one I’ve come across before)

Does wire feature in equivalents of these expressions in other languages, or in other idioms?

The yellowing of the year

By Simon

We were discussing Irish idioms involving colours today and one of the ones I really liked was buíú na bliana*, which literally means “the yellowing of the year” and refers to the time when spring is becoming summer and the light becomes yellower and warmer.

Red or dearg is used in expressions such as: deargbhréag, a barefaced or blatant lie; deargamadán, an utter fool; dearg-ghráin, intense hatred; and deargiomaíocht, cutthroat competition.

Black or dubh is used in such expressions as: dubh le daoine, swarming with people; and ó dhubh go dubh (from black to black), round the clock or from dawn to dusk.

I’ll put together a page of these idioms for the colours section on Omniglot.

* As I didn’t see it written down, I’m not totally sure that it’s written like this.