Category: Words and phrases

Word of the day – wintle

By Simon

I came across the word wintle [‘winəl / ‘wintəl] in Louis de Bernières’ novel Notwithstanding, which I just finished reading. From the context – she walks carefully so as not to wintle on the rimy Bargate stones of the path – I guessed that it meant to slip or something similar.

According the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary it’s Scottish and means to stagger, reel or wriggle. It’s possibly comes from the Dutch word windtelen (to reel).

Dictionary.com defines it as 1. (noun) a rolling or staggering motion. 2. (verb) to roll or swing back and forth. 3. (verb) to tumble over; capsize.

Have you heard this word before?

Word of the day – ortzikara

By Simon

Today’s word, ortzikara, is Basque and means “time when a storm is brewing” or in Spanish “tiempo amenazado por la tormenta”. Do any other language have a single word to express this meaning?

This word comes from a book I’m reading at the moment – Mother Tongues – Travels through Tribal Europe, by Helena Drysdale, in which the author and her family travel through Europe visiting people who speak minority languages such as Basque, Occitan, Sami and Corsican.

Related words include ihortziri (thunder), tximista (lightning), truxu (light rain), euri (heavy rain), bisuts (torrential rain), zara-zara (heavy rain), ortzadar (rainbow), haize (wind), elur (snow) and bisutsa (light snow). In fact there seems to be quite a lot words in Basque for different kinds of weather.

Word of the day – ig

By Simon

The Welsh word ig (plural: igion) means hiccough. The verb, to hiccough / sob, is igian, igio or igion.

When I’m singing or playing the tin whistle or other wind instruments I often get hiccoughs, and the other day I was trying to explain this to a Welsh friend in Welsh, but didn’t know the Welsh word for hiccup. So I looked it up.

The English word hiccough (also spelt hiccup) is thought to be an imitation of the sound of hiccoughs, and the Welsh word ig probably is as well.

In other languages hiccough is:
Czech: škytavka
German: Schluckauf
Dutch: hik
French: hoquet
Irish: snag
Italian: singhiozzo
Spanish: hipo

The medical terms for hiccough are synchronous diaphragmatic flutter (SDF), or singultus, from the Latin, singult, “the act of catching one’s breath while sobbing”.

Do you have any good cures for hiccoughs?

I usually hold my breath and/or drink water.

Noel, genes and genius

By Simon

When singing the Christmas carol The First Noel the other day I started wondering where the word noel comes from. I knew noël was French for Christmas, but wasn’t sure where that came from.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, noel comes from the Latin natalis (birth) via the Old French noel (the Christmas season), and the Middle English nowel.

Quite a few other words for Christmas probably come from the same root – Natale (Italian), Navidad (Spanish), Natal (Portuguese), Nadal (Catalan/Galician/Occitan/Romansh), Nadolig (Welsh), Nedeleg (Breton), Nadelik (Cornish), Nollaig (Irish/Scottish Gaelic), and Nollick (Manx).

natalis comes from natus, the past participle of nasci (to be born), which comes from the Old Latin gnasci (to be born), which is cognate with the Latin genus (race, stock, kind), and the Greek γένος [genos] (race, kind) and γόνος [gonos] (birth, offspring, stock), the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root of which is *gen-/*gon-/*gn- (to produce, beget, be born).

Other words derived from that PIE root include genius, gene, king and kin in English, gentis (Lithuanian – kinsman), Kind (German – child), geni (Welsh – to be born), and I’m sure there are plenty of others.

The land of rabbits

By Simon

Photo of a rabbit

When adding more animals to the Celtic Connections section on Omniglot the other day, I started wondering about the origins of the Celtic words for rabbit – connín (Irish), coinean (Scottish Gaelic), conning (Manx), cwningen (Welsh), conyn (Cornwell), c’honikl (Breton). They appear to be related to each other, and also to the English word coney, which was used for rabbit until the 18th century, while rabbit was used for the young of the coney from about the 14th century.

Rabbit apparently comes from the Walloon robète, which is a diminutive of the Flemish or Middle Dutch robbe.

Coney comes from the Anglo-Norman conis, the plural of conil “long-eared rabbit” (Lepus cunicula) from the Latin cuniculus, which means burrow and comes from the Greek κύνικλος (kýniklos), which is thought to come from an Iberian word for burrow. Related words in other languages include kanin (Danish), konijn (Dutch), bunny (English), Kaninchen (German), coniglio (Italian).

There’s a popular theory that the Roman name for Spain, Hispania, which became España and Spain, comes from the Phoenician name for Iberia i-shepan-im, the land or coast of rabbits. When the Phoenicians first visited Iberia in around 500 BC they saw lots of rabbits there which they named after a similar animal, the hyrax of North Africa.

Word of the day – cawl

By Simon

Today’s word, cawl /kaul/, is a Welsh word meaning soup, broth, gruel or a mess.

Cawl is also a traditional Welsh stew made with meat and vegetables. It’s the kind of dish that’s made from whatever is available so the exact ingredients vary, but it often includes lamb and leeks, and is often served with bread and cheese. There a recipe for cawl and more information here.

The word cawl probably comes from the Latin caulis, which means the stalk of a plant, a cabbage stalk or a cabbage. It is related to the Irish cál, the Scottish Gaelic càl, the Cornish caul, the Breton kaol, the German Kohl, the English cole, as in coleslaw, and the Scots kail, all of which mean cabbage. The Welsh word for cabbage is completely different – bresychen.

The Proto-Indo-European root of caulis is *kaw(ǝ)l, which means tubular bone or pipe.

Word of the day – gwrthryfel

By Simon

The Welsh word gwrthryfel means rebellion or mutiny. I heard it while listening to a programme on Radio Cyrmru about the The Chartists. I worked out what it meant from its roots: gwrth (against) and rhyfel (war), and this got me thinking about how Welsh words like this are easier to understand than their English equivalents as they’re made up of Welsh roots rather than borrowing from Latin, Greek or other languages.

Then I thought that maybe the English word rebel has the same structure as the Welsh word -I knew that the bel part had something to do with war in Latin and guessed that re meant against. I checked this and found that it comes from the Latin rebellare, to rebel, wage war against, which is made up of re (opposite, against), and bellare (to wage war), which comes from from bellum (war).

Knowing Latin certainly can help you understand the etymology of many English words, and knowing Welsh can also be useful in unexpected ways.

Word of the day – lakh

By Simon

Today’s word, lakh, appears in the description of a online Gujarati dictionary. It means 100,000 and is used in the English of India and in other languages spoken in Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma and Pakistan. Lakh comes from the Hindi लाख (lākh), which itself comes from the Sanskrit लक्ष (lakṣá).

A related word is crore (करोड़ in Hindi), which means 100 lakh, or 10 million, is often abbreviated to cr, and appears in the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? – Kaun Banega Crorepati? (Who will be a ten-millionaire?).

The Gujarati equivalents of lakh and crore are લાખ (lākh) and કરોડ (karoḍ).

The new dictionary looks really useful, by the way, with monolingual (Gujarati-Gujarati), and bilingual (Gujarati<>English) options, as well as a thesaurus (બંધિયાર સ્થળો), phrases (તાળો), idioms (ચુડેલનો વાંસો), proverbs (સુખનું મૂળ સંતોષ), a spellchecker and other tools and information.