{"id":10629,"date":"2014-11-06T13:41:38","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T12:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=10629"},"modified":"2014-11-06T13:41:38","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T12:41:38","slug":"paddling-poodles-and-dibbling-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=10629","title":{"rendered":"Paddling poodles and dibbling ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/pudelhund.jpg\" weight=\"190\" height=\"179\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;\" alt=\"Pudelhund \/ Poodle\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I discovered that poodles were bred to hunt ducks and other water fowl in Germany, and that the word poodle comes from the German <em>Pudel<\/em>, an abbreviation of <em>Pudelhund<\/em> (water dog), from the Low German <em>Pudel<\/em> (puddle), from <em>pudeln<\/em> (to splash about) [<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/poodle\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The English word puddle is derived from the Old English word <em>pudd<\/em> (ditch), and is related to the German <em>pudeln<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>A group of ducks on water is known as a paddling, team or raft of ducks &#8211; so you might see a paddling of dibbling ducks on a puddle puzzling a poodle. <\/p>\n<p>Other collections words for groups of birds: <a href=\"http:\/\/baltimorebirdclub.org\/gnlist.html\">http:\/\/baltimorebirdclub.org\/gnlist.html<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.britishbirdlovers.co.uk\/articles\/collective-nouns-for-birds\">http:\/\/www.britishbirdlovers.co.uk\/articles\/collective-nouns-for-birds<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another duck-related word is <strong>dibble<\/strong>, which means &#8220;to drink like a duck, lifting up the head after each sip&#8221;. It also means &#8220;a small, hand-held, pointed implement for making holes in soil, as for planting seedlings and bulbs; to make holes (in soil) with a dibble; to plant with a dibble&#8221;, and is a slang word for a police officer &#8211; from Officer Dibble in the <em>Top Cat<\/em> cartoons [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefreedictionary.com\/dibble\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I discovered that poodles were bred to hunt ducks and other water fowl in Germany, and that the word poodle comes from the German Pudel, an abbreviation of Pudelhund (water dog), from the Low German Pudel (puddle), from pudeln (to splash about) [source]. The English word puddle is derived from the Old English word [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,116,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-german","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629","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=10629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}