{"id":21256,"date":"2021-08-11T20:10:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-11T20:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21256"},"modified":"2021-08-11T20:10:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T20:10:46","slug":"unreliable-wool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21256","title":{"rendered":"Unreliable Wool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If your thinking is <strong>woolly<\/strong>, it is unclear, fuzzy, hazy, confused, vague, cloudy and\/or confused and irrational, and you base it more on emotions rather than logic. You might be said to be <strong>woolly-headed<\/strong> or <strong>woolly-minded<\/strong>. For those of you who use American English, just ignore the second l in woolly [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/woolly\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/omniglot\/14740456187\/in\/photolist-osyG5k-oK27NW-oK27cq\" title=\"Highland cows \/ B\u00f2 Gh\u00e0idhealach \/ Hielan coo\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/3850\/14740456187_af36cd0772_z.jpg\" alt=\"Highland cows \/ B\u00f2 Gh\u00e0idhealach \/ Hielan coo\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>If you like to do a bit of <strong>woolgathering<\/strong>, then you either gather tufts of wool caught on bushes, are absentminded, or like to indulge in idle fancies and daydreams  [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/woolgathering\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>In Dutch the word <strong>wollig<\/strong> [\u02c8\u028b\u0254.l\u0259x] means woolly, fluffy, fuzzy, and also vague, unclear or muddy (tone) [<a href=\"https:\/\/context.reverso.net\/translation\/dutch-english\/wollig\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>In Welsh, one word for woolly is <strong>gwlanog<\/strong> [\u02c8\u0261wlan\u0254\u0261], which also means fleecy, unshorn, downy, woollen, and a well-off or well-to-do person. There are more sheep than people in Wales and owning a lot of them was probably a sign of prosperity in the past.<\/p>\n<p>A related Welsh word <strong>gwlanen<\/strong> [\u02c8\u0261wlan\u025bn], which means a flannel or face-cloth, and also a man of weak character, one who lacks backbone, and a spineless or unreliable person, <strong>gwlanennog<\/strong> means flannel-like, soft and also weak-willed, without backbone, unreliable or spineless [<a href=\"https:\/\/welsh-dictionary.ac.uk\/gpc\/gpc.html\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>So a well-off person who is spineless would be a <strong>gwlanog gwlanennog<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>You can find more woolly words in Celtic languages in today\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/celtiadur\/2021\/08\/11\/wool\/\">Celtiadur post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, the English word <strong>flannel<\/strong> comes ultimately from <em>*wlan\u0101<\/em>, a Gaulish word meaning wool, via Old French and Norman [<a href=\"https:\/\/welsh-dictionary.ac.uk\/gpc\/gpc.html\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Are there any interesting wool-related expressions in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If your thinking is woolly, it is unclear, fuzzy, hazy, confused, vague, cloudy and\/or confused and irrational, and you base it more on emotions rather than logic. You might be said to be woolly-headed or woolly-minded. For those of you who use American English, just ignore the second l in woolly [source]. If you like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,104,107,10,34,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-old-french","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21256","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=21256"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21264,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21256\/revisions\/21264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}