Drawing and Dragging

The word withdrawal comes from withdraw, which, according to Wiktionary, means,

  1. To pull back, aside or away
  2. To stop talking to, or interacting with, other people and start thinking thoughts that are not related to what is happening around.
  3. To take back (a comment, etc).

… and a few other things.

It comes from the Middle English word withdrawen (to draw away, to draw back), from with (away, back), and drawen (to draw, drag, pull), which comes from the Old English draġan (to draw, pull, attract), from the Proto-Germanic *draganą (to draw, pull, carry), from the Proto-Indo-European *dʰregʰ- (to pull, draw, drag). The word drag comes from the same root source].

King James' Drawing Room

The term withdrawing room, a room in a house where visitors may be entertained, dates from the 17th century, and was later abbreviated to drawing room. In some households there was a tradition until about the mid-20th century, that after a formal dinner, the ladies would withdraw to the drawing room, while the gentlemen remained in the dinning room to talk about things like politics, perhaps while smoking and drinking port or other beverages. After a respectable interval the gentlemen would join the ladies in the drawing room [source].

The modern equivalent of the drawing room might be called the living room in some houses, or perhaps the lounge. We called it the sitting room in the house I grew up in. What do you call it?

With as a prefix can mean: against or in opposition to, as in withstand. In withhold and withdraw it means back, back around, in reverse” or in return. The are other words with the with prefix, such as withbear (to carry/bear away, gather, endure), withgo (to go against, give up), withgang (to indulge), and withjoin (to rebuke, withold, withstand), but they are obsolete and archaic [source].

Fine Fettles

Are you in fine fettle?

If you’re in fine fettle, you are in a good state or condition, according to dictionary.com. It apparently comes from a Lancashire dialect word meaning “to shape, prepare, fix, arrange”.

Fettle may come from Middle English fetlen (to shape, fix, put, bestow), possibly from the Old English fetian (to fetch, bring to, marry), or from the Old English fetel (belt, girdle).

According to Wiktionary, fettle as a noun means:

  • A state of proper physical condition; kilter or trim.
  • One’s mental state; spirits.
  • Sand used to line a furnace.
  • A person’s mood or state, often assuming the worst (Geordie / Cumbrian dialect): e.g. What’s yer fettle marra?
  • a seam line left by the meeting of mold pieces (in ceramics)
  • The act of fettling (British dialect)

As a verb, fettle means:

  • To sort out, to fix, to mend, to repair (Northern England)
  • To make preparations; to put things in order; to do trifling business
  • To line the hearth of a furnace with sand prior to pouring molten metal.
  • To be upset or in a bad mood (Geordie dialect), e.g. Divint fettle yersel ower that!
  • To remove (as by sanding) the seam lines left by the meeting of two molds (in ceramics)
  • To prepare (archaic)

Fettle is usually used in the phrase ‘in fine fettle’. Have you seen/heard it used with other words or in other contexts?

Emordnilaps

A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads the same in both directions. Examples include Malayalam, madam, and flee to me, remote elf.

Have you ever wondered what the opposite of a palindrome is?

Well a word that becomes a different word when spelled backwards is known as a reverse pair, or an emordnilap, which is palindrome spelled backwards.

Apparently one of the first sightings of emordnilaps in the wild occurred back in February 2014 on the blog Wordsmythologic in a post that defined emordnilap as “any word that, when spelled backwards, produces another word”.

According to Wikipedia, another word for an emordnilap, is a semordnilap, or palindromes spelled backwards. It was probably first used by recreational linguist Dmitri Borgmann, and appeared in C. C. Bombaugh’s Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961). Other names include anadrome, half-palindrome, heteropalindrome, reversgram, reversible anagram, semi-palindrome, word reversal and levidrome.

Some examples of emordnilaps / semordnilaps include: avid diva, drab bard, snub buns, stressed desserts, mined denim and regal lager. Actually, when written like this, these are palindromes, but I’m sure you get the idea.

Sources: Snopes, signtwordsgame

Clustering Consonants!

Clusters of consonants are quite common in Czech. Some words have no vowels at all. A couple that I came across recently: brzd [ˈbr̩st] (break) and krb [kr̩p] (fireplace).

Brzd is the genitive plural of brzda (brake (in a vehicle)). Related words include: brzdit [ˈbr̩zɟɪt] (to break) and brzdný [ˈbr̩zdniː] (breaking).

Krb means fire, hearth, fireplace or ingle. Related words include: krbový (relating or pertaining to fireplaces), krbová deska (hearthstone) and krbové náčiní (fire irons).

Other vowelless words include:

  • blb [ˈbl̩p] = wally (stupid person)
  • chrp [ˈxr̩p] = of cornflowers
  • drhl [ˈdr̩ɦl̩]= he scrubbed, scoured, rubbed
  • hrkl [ˈɦr̩kl̩] = he rattled
  • krk [kr̩k] = neck
  • plch [pl̩x] = dormouse
  • scvrkl [ˈst͡svr̩kl̩] = he shrank
  • škrtl [ˈʃkr̩tl̩] = he cancelled, deleted, scratched
  • vlk [vl̩k] = wolf

Source: Wiktionary

There are several tongue twisters made up of words like this:

See and hear more of these.

In fact, the r and l in these words funtion as semi-vowels, so you could say that they’re not really vowelless. This doesn’t make them any easier to pronounce.

Sources: Wiktionary and bab.la

Are you a quidnunc?

A quidnunc is “a person eager to learn news and scandal”, or in other words, a busybody, gossip or nosy parker. It comes from the Latin quid nunc? (what now?) [source].

If you are a quidnunc, then you could be said to be quidnunctious and maybe you engage in quidnuncery (irresponsible rumourmongering).

I heard this word discussed on the Something Rhymes with Purple podcast, and thought I’d write about it.

Do you know any other words that come from phrases like this?

What would you call a quidnunc?

Nurdling

Do you nurdle? Have you ever nurdled?

The verb to nurddle means:

  • To score runs by gently nudging the ball into vacant areas of the field (in cricket).
  • To gently waffle or muse on a subject which one clearly knows little about.

The noun nurddle means:

  • A type of shot in cricket
  • A cylindrical shaped pre-production plastic pellet used in manufacturing and packaging.
  • A blob of toothpaste shaped like a wave, often depicted on toothpaste packaging.

The origins of this word are uncertain.

Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nurdle

Are there equvialents of this word in other languages?

Working like a …

The Russian idiom, работать как лошадь, means to work hard, or literally ‘to work like a horse’. Another idiom with the same meaning is работать как проклятый (‘to work like the damned’) [source].

Horse Ploughing (18)

In English you might say that you’re working like a dog. Other variations on this phrase include wokring like a beaver and working like a trojan [source]. Do you know of any others?

hard working

In Welsh you might say that you’re working ‘to the marrow of your bones’ – gweithio hyd fêr dy esgyrn, which means to work for hard, or to overwork.

One equvialent in French is travailler comme un acharné (‘working like a relentless person’).

What about in other languages?