![\"Mochyn](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/mochi.gif\")
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Yesterday I came across an interesting Welsh word in one of my Welsh dictionaries (Y Geiriadur Mawr<\/em>) – mochi<\/strong> [‘m\u0254x\u026a] – which means “ymdrybaeddu fel moch \/ to wallow as swine”. It comes from moch<\/em> (pigs), the singular of which is mochyn<\/em>, from the Proto-Celtic *mokkus<\/em> (pig), which probably comes from a non-Indo-European root [source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n In English the equivalent of mochi<\/em> is to pig<\/strong>, which means “(of a sow) to give birth; to live in squalor (also ‘to pig it’); or to devour (food) greedily (also ‘to pig out, to pig oneself, to make a pig of oneself’)” [source<\/a>]. None of these has quite the meaning of the Welsh word though.<\/p>\n Are there words or phrases in other languages similar to mochi<\/em>?<\/p>\n The English word pig comes from the Middle English pigge<\/em> (pig, pigling), which referred a young pig \/ piglet – adult pigs were known as swine [source<\/a>], which comes from the Old English sw\u012bn<\/em> (pig, hog, wild boar), from the Proto-Germanic *sw\u012bn\u0105<\/em> (swine, pig), from the Proto-Indo-European *s\u016b-<\/em> (pig), which is also the root of sow (female pig) [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n Another pig-related word in English is pork (pig meat), which comes from the Middle English pork\/porc<\/em>, via Anglo-Norman from the Old French porc<\/em> (swine, hog, pig, pork), from the Latin porcus<\/em> (domestic hog, pig), from Proto-Indo-European *por\u1e31-<\/em> (young swine, young pig), which is cognate with the Old English fearh<\/em> (young pig, hog), and the root of farrow. [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n Comparing someone to a pig is generally an insult in English – e.g. You eat like a pig! Dirty pig! etc. Also ‘the pigs’ is a slang term for the police. What about in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday I came across an interesting Welsh word in one of my Welsh dictionaries (Y Geiriadur Mawr) – mochi [‘m\u0254x\u026a] – which means “ymdrybaeddu fel moch \/ to wallow as swine”. It comes from moch (pigs), the singular of which is mochyn, from the Proto-Celtic *mokkus (pig), which probably comes from a non-Indo-European root [source]. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,45,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-proto-indo-european","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}