Month: April 2010

Word of the day – paraphe

By Simon

Example of a signature with a paraph

The word paraphe, which is also spelled parafe, came up last night at the French conversation group – we were looking for how to say initial (letter) in French and found this word, along with initiale.

The word also exists in English – paraph. Definitions include:

  • a flourish made after or below a signature, originally to prevent forgery
  • a flourish after a signature, originally to prevent forgery
  • a flourish or other embellishment made after a signature, either as idiosyncrasy or to protect against forgery

[Source]

It comes from via French from the Medieval Latin paraphus, a variant of paragraphus (paragraph).

Pictish

By Simon

Pictish stone

Using mathematical analysis, scholars at the University of Exeter have discovered that the symbols used in Pictish inscriptions are likely to represent a language, according to this article.

The team compared the Pictish symbols, which date from the 4th-9th centuries AD with more than hundreds of texts in known ancient and modern languages. They compared short and longer sequences of characters and concluded that the Pictish symbols seem to represent a language with a small vocabulary, however the meaning of the texts remains a mystery.

There are plans to apply these techniques to other undeciphered scripts such as the Indus Valley script.