{"id":23212,"date":"2023-12-21T16:42:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T16:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23212"},"modified":"2023-12-21T16:42:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T16:42:01","slug":"decals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=23212","title":{"rendered":"Decals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Are you familiar with <strong>decals<\/strong>? Or maybe, like me, you call them <strong>stickers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/\/images\/blog\/stickers.jpg\" width=\"630\" height=\"329\" alt=\"Sitckers \/ Decals\" \/><br \/>\n<em>One of my ukulele cases with some stickers on it<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Whatever you call them, they are \u201ca design or picture produced in order to be transferred to another surface either permanently or temporarily.\u201d or in other words, a decorative sticker. Apparently <strong>decal<\/strong> can be used as a verb as well, meaning to apply decals to (sth) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/decal\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve come across the word <strong>decal<\/strong> in novels and other texts by American writers, but I hadn\u2019t heard anybody use it in speech. Yesterday I watched a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/VNFMMSSrcy0?si=sslRNHOSbmtF89bu\">video<\/a> made by a Canadian woman in Japan in which she talks about <strong>decals<\/strong>, and pronounces it [\u02c8d\u025bk\u0259l] (deckle). This surprised me as I assumed it was pronounced more like [\u02c8di\u02d0.k\u00e6l] (dee-cal).<\/p>\n<p>Apparently, both pronunciations are used: [\u02c8di\u02d0.k\u00e6l] in central Canada and Australia, and [\u02c8d\u025bk\u0259l] in the USA, western Canada and Australia. If you use this word, how do you pronounce it, and where are you from?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Decal<\/strong> is an abbreviation of <strong>decalcomania<\/strong> (The process of transferring decorative designs onto surfaces using decals; a decal), from French  <strong>d\u00e9calcomanie<\/strong> (<em>same meaning<\/em>), <strong>d\u00e9calquer<\/strong> (to trace, transfer [a design]), and <strong>-manie<\/strong> (a compulsion, obsession, a place where something can be found in great amounts).<\/p>\n<p>A word that possibly comes from the same root is <strong>cockamamie<\/strong>, which means a foolish or ridiculous person; ridiculousness, folly or foolish nonsense; foolish, ill-considered, silly, unbelievable, triffling, and used to mean a decal [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/cockamamie#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>Are there any words that aren\u2019t pronounced as you&#8217;d expect based on their written forms?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you familiar with decals? Or maybe, like me, you call them stickers. One of my ukulele cases with some stickers on it Whatever you call them, they are \u201ca design or picture produced in order to be transferred to another surface either permanently or temporarily.\u201d or in other words, a decorative sticker. Apparently decal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23212","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=23212"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23217,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23212\/revisions\/23217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}