Category: Etymology

Peu profond

By Simon

Last night I discovered that there doesn’t appear to be a separate French word for shallow, at least when you’re talking about shallow water, dishes or graves – the term peu profond (‘not very deep’) is used in these cases. If you’re talking about a shallow person, mind, writing, novel, film or conversation though, the word to use is superficiel(le), or you can say that they manque de profondeur (lack depth).

This got me wondering whether there is a Latin word for shallow, when referring to water, etc, which didn’t end up in French. According to my Latin dictionary, shallow is brevis, vadōsus or levis. Another Latin dictionary I checked defines brevis as short, vadōsus as “full of shallows, shallow, shoal” and levis as “light, not heavy” or “smooth, not rough”.

The English word shallow first appeared in writing in the early 15th century schalowe, and is possibly related to schald (Old English sceald) – shoal.

Bro

By Simon

Last night one of my friends was wondering about the meaning of the Welsh word bro, which appears in some Welsh placenames, such as Bro Morgannwg (the Vale of Glamorgan). So I thought I’d find out.

Bro /bro:/ is a Welsh word meaning “region, country, vale, lowland”. It is used mainly in place names, and appears in the expression bro a bryn (hill and dale), and in papurau bro (local Welsh language newspapers). It is also part of such words as brodir (region, country) and brodor (native), and in Y Fro Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Area) – the parts of Wales where Welsh is the majority language. It is a somewhat similar concept to the Gaeltachtaí in Ireland, though has no official recognition.

The same word exists in Cornish and Breton and has the same meaning. The Breton names for regions of Brittany all begin with Bro, for example Bro-Leon (Léon), Bro-Wened (Vannetais) and Bro-Gernev (Cornouauille), and England is Bro-Saoz (‘Land of the Saxons’), and Scotland is Bro-Skos or Skos in Breton.

Mawdelit

By Simon

Mawdelit is one of the Scots words discussed in a programme I watched last night called Blethering Scots. It was described as an illness you pretend to have to get time off work, and comes from the French mal de lit, which is related to the medieval Latin malum lecti – an illness that confines one to bed or a bed-sickness.

Other words mentioned in the programme include:

– fankle – to catch in a snare, to trap; to tangle, ravel, mix up; confused, tangled, and the related words fankled and fanglet

Example: It was jist the ither day I got fankled wi’ some o’ ma accoonts.

– stramash – an uproar, commotion, hubbub, disturbance, a broil, squabble, row; to shatter, to smash to pieces

Example: There arose a stramash doon stairs fiercer than ordinary.

– glaikit – stupid, foolish; thoughtless, irresponsible, flighty; playful, full of pranks; wanton; sportive, roguish (of the eyes); deceitful, shifty.

Example: There rest him weel; for eith [also] can we Spare mony glakit gouks [fools] like he.

One contributor to the programme mentioned that it was unusual to see such words written down when he was young and that children were told that these words were wrong when they used them in school. Nowadays, however, some schools are teaching Scots and encourage its use. It is also used to a limited extent in the media.

Source: Dictionary of the Scot Language / Dictionar o the Scots Leid

Epizeuxis

By Simon

I came across the word epizeuxis recently (in One of Our Thursdays is Missing, by Jasper Fforde) and wasn’t sure what it meant or even how to pronounce it, so I decided to find out.

According to the OED, epizeuxis (/ɛpɪˈzjuːksɪs/) is “a figure by which a word is repeated with vehemence or emphasis.” It comes via Latin from the Greek ἐπίζευξις (epizeuxis – a fastening upon), from ἐπί (epi – upon) and ζευγνύναι (zeugnunai – to yoke).

Wikipedia says that, “In rhetoric, an epizeuxis is the repetition of words in immediate succession, for vehemence or emphasis” and gives examples such as “O horror, horror, horror.” from Macbeth, and “Education, education, education.” by Tony Blair.

Information about this and other terms used in rhetoric from abating* to zeugma** can be found in the Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric.

* abating in an English version of anesis (/ˈænɪsɪs/), from the Greek ἄνεσις (anesis – a loosening, relaxing, abating) = “adding a concluding sentence that diminishes the effect of what has been said previously. The opposite of epitasis.”

** zeugma (/ˈzjuːgmə/), from the Greek ζεῦγμα (zeûgma – yoke) = “A general term describing when one part of speech (most often the main verb, but sometimes a noun) governs two or more other parts of a sentence (often in a series).”

Canapés, sofas and curtains

By Simon

Sofa / couch / settee / davenport / settle / chesterfield

The other day I discovered that one French word for sofa is canapé (/kanape/), and that canapé-lit or canapé transformable/convertible is a sofa bed. The word sofa is also used in French, and canapé can also mean an open sandwich.

According to the OED, in English canapé (/ˈkænəpɪ/) can mean both “A piece of bread or toast, etc., on which small savouries are served.” and “A sofa”. I’ve never come across it used to mean sofa in English, and had always assumed that canapés were small items of food similar to tapas. I think such things are also known as appetisers or hors d’oeuvres.

Canapé comes from the Medieval Latin canāpēum, from canōpēum (mosquito curtains; pavilion, tent, bed), from the Latin cōnōpēum (seat with a baldaquin*), from the Ancient Greek κωνωπεῖον (kōnōpeion – an Egyptian bed or couch with mosquito curtains), from κάνωψ (kánōs – gnat, mosquito). In English the word came to mean mainly curtain or canopy, which comes from the same root, while in French and other Romance languages its primary meaning became sofa or couch.

Sofa /ˈsəʊfə/ probably arrived via the Turkish sofa from the Arabic صفة (súffa – a long seat made of stone or brick).

Settee /sɛˈtiː/ is probably a variant of settle /ˈsɛt(ə)l/, “a long bench, often with a high back and arms, with storage space underneath for linen.” [source]. Settle comes from the Old English setl, from the Germanic *setlo-, from the pre-Germanic *sedlo-, from the Proto-Indo-European *sed-lo-, from *sed- (to sit).

Couch /kaʊtʃ/ comes from the French couche, from the Old French culche, which is cognate with coucher (to sleep), which comes from the Latin collocāre (to lay in its place, lay aright, lodge) from com- (together) and locāre (to place).

*Baldaquin /ˈbældəkɪn/ = “A structure in the form of a canopy, either supported on columns, suspended from the roof, or projecting from the wall, placed above an altar, throne, or door-way”.

What do you call your a long padded seat designed for two or more people? If it can be converted into a bed, what do you call it?

For my parents such a piece of furniture is a settee, and I used to use this name as well. Now I usually call it a sofa. We also have a piece of furniture that came from my grandparents and that we call a settle – a long wooden seat with a high, straight wooden back, wooden arms and a narrow seat with a cushion on top. The seat also lifts up and we store board games inside.

Tiffin

By Simon

A tiffin carrier / tiffin-box / dabba / tiffin

I encountered the word tiffin the other day as the name of type of cake and wondered where it comes from.

According to the OED, tiffin is a light midday meal or luncheon in India and neighbouring eastern countries. It is also used as a verb meaning ‘to take tiffin/lunch’ or ‘to provide with tiffin’.

It is thought to derive from the English slang/dialect word tiffing, from the verb to tiff, which means ‘to take a little drink or sip’. The origins of tiff are unknown.

Tiffin is used to refer to snacks between meals in southern India and Nepal. Elsewhere in India tiffin might be a packed lunch, which is often delivered by dabbawallahs or tiffin wallahs on bicycles in places like Mumbai, and is packed in a lunch box known as a tiffin carrier, a tiffin-box, a dabba or a tiffin (see picture top right). Such lunches may contain such things as rice, curry, vegetables, dal, chapatis or spicy meats.

In the early 19th century the British custom of having a large meal during the afternoon was found to be less than ideal for the hot climate of India, and British inhabitants of India acquired the Indian custom of a light meal at midday and a larger meal in the evening. The earliest reference to tiffin in the OED dates back to 1800.

Sources: Wikipedia & World Wide Words

The tiffin cake I ate contained chocolate, dates, crushed biscuits, raisins and other goodies, and was rather tasty. There are recipes for this type of tiffin here and here.

Occlupanid

By Simon

Example of an occlupanid (Archignatha)

Yesterday I discovered an interesting new word – occlupanid, which is defined by the Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group as follows:

“Occlupanids are generally found as parasitoids on bagged pastries in supermarket biomes, although a few species are found on vegetables and bulk grains, and one notable species (Uniporus) is found exclusively on vent tubing bags. Their fascinating and complex life cycle is unfortunately severely under-researched. What is known is that they take nourishment from the plastic sacs that surround the bagged product, not the product itself, as was previously thought. They often situate themselves toward the center of the plastic bag, holding in the contents. This leads to speculation that the relationship may be more symbiotic than purely parasitic.”

The common name for occlupanid is apparently breadtie, and the HORG is dedicated to the taxonomic classification of the breadties of the world. They provide details about different species of occlupanid – the one on the right is an archignatha (“first tooth”), for example – the morphology of their names, and their taxonomy and history. The term occlupanid comes from the Latin occlūdere (to shut up, to close) and the Greek παγ (pan – bread), which is also found in pancreas (“sweet bread”).

What do you call these things?

Web grazing

By Simon

I came across the word brigbori in a Welsh book I’m reading at the moment (Shamus Mulligan a’r Parot, gan Harri Parri) and was a bit puzzled by it at first. I guessed from the context that it means something like ‘to browse’, and my Welsh dictionary confirmed this – it means to browse or to nibble. It appears in the sentence:

“Gan ei bod hi’n bnawn eithriadol o braf penderfynodd Ceinwen ac Eilir gymrd eu ‘te Sul’ yn yr ardd: Ceinwen yn brigbori drwy y goedwig o dudalennau a ddaeth gyda’r papur Sul a’i gŵr yn gwylio’r pysgod aur yn nofio’n esmwyth ar hyd wyneb y llyn llonydd ac ambell un ohonynt, oherwydd y gwres, yn sugno’r awyr â’i geg.

This means something like, “As it was an exceptionally fine afternoon, Ceinwen and Eilir decided to take ‘Sunday tea’ in the garden: Ceinwen browsing through the forest of pages that came with the Sunday paper, and her husband watching the goldfish swimming quietly across the surface of the quiet lake, with some of them, because of the heat, sucking in air with their mouths.”

Brigbori is a combination of two words – brig (top, summit, twig) and pori (to graze), so could be interpreted as meaning “to graze across the top”, which is browsing is all about.

Brig appears in such expressions as brig y nos (dusk – “top of the night”), glo brig (open-cast coal – “top coal”), brigdorri (to prune – “to cut the top”), brigiad (outcrop), brigladd (to lop the tops – “to kill the top), briglwyd (hoary-headed – “grey top”).

Pori appears in poriant (pasture – also porfa) and porio (to pasture – obsolete). Pori is also used to mean ‘to browse the web’. or literally ‘to graze the web’, and the word for web browser is porwr (grazier, browser) – and old word put to new use.

Pride

By Simon

I’m often asked to translate words and phrases into various languages. Without any context this is particular challenging as a word in English might have more than one possible translations in another language.

The other day, for example, I was asked to translate “Scottish Pride” into Scots and Scottish Gaelic. The Scots version is easy, “Scots Pride”, and the Scottish part is easy in Scottish Gaelic, “na h-Alba”, but there are quite a few equivalents of pride, each of which has slightly or very different meanings. Dwelly gives the following translations of pride:

– ain-mèin – pride, haughtiness, arrogance, frowardness.
– ànart – pride, disdain, contempt.
– àrdan – pride, haughtiness; anger, wrath; height, eminence, hillock
– barracaid – pride; loud talk.
– boiteal – pride, haughtiness, arrogance.
– borraileachd – pride.
– bròd – pride, arrogance, haughtiness; chastisement;
– cuidealachd – pride.
– diomas – pride, arrogance; defiance.
– làstan – pride, sauciness, lordliness boasting for nothing.
– mórchuis – pride, pomp, magnificence, splendour; boasting, vainglory, ambition, state, pride, glory; exploit
– pròis – pride, haughtiness; flattery; humouring, cajoling; ceremony; neat, punctilious little female, prude; conceit; niceness
– pròisealachd – pride, haughtiness; punctiliousness, niceness, ceremoniousness; humouring nattering; punctilious prudery or neatness.
– spailp – pride, spirit, courage, boldness; conceit, self-conceit; foppish young man, beau; airs of importance; armour, belt; kiss; lie; attitude of the foot stretched out, as of a self-important fellow
– starn – pride, haughtiness, conceit.
– stàt – pride, haughtiness.
– stràic – pride, self-conceit; swell of anger or passion
– uabhar – pride, insolence, bluster, vainglory; pomp; heat; extreme pride
– baiseal – pride, arrogance, haughtiness.
– barracaideachd – pride, sauciness.
– cuidealas – pride, conceit, forwardness.
– leòime – pride, self-conceit; foppishness, prudery, coquetry.
– leòm – pride, conceit, gaudiness, foppishness, vainglory, prudery; drawling pronunciation; flattery
– rimhiadh – pride.
– uaibhreachas – pride, pomp, vainglory, haughtiness, arrogance; insolence; great haughtiness, extreme degree of pride or vainglory

Without any context, I would guess that “Mórchuis na h-Alba” might be a good translation of “Scottish Pride”.

In English pride can have a number of meanings as well. According to the OED it can mean:

– A high, esp. an excessively high, opinion of one’s own worth or importance which gives rise to a feeling or attitude of superiority over others; inordinate self-esteem.
– Personified, esp. as the first of the seven deadly sins.
– Arrogant, haughty, or overbearing behaviour, demeanour, or treatment of others, esp. as exhibiting an inordinately high opinion of oneself.
– A consciousness of what befits, is due to, or is worthy of oneself or one’s position; self-respect; self-esteem, esp. of a legitimate or healthy kind or degree.
– The feeling of satisfaction, pleasure, or elation derived from some action, ability, possession, etc., which one believes does one credit.
– Magnificence, splendour; pomp, ostentation, display
– A group of lions forming a social unit.
– The best, highest, or most flourishing state or condition; the prime; the flower.

Pride is derived from proud, from the Old French prod/pro/prot/proz (courageous, valiant, good, noble), from the post-classical Latin prode (profitable, advantageous, useful), from the classical Latin prōdesse (to be of value, be good).

Pandora’s banjo

By Simon

Banjo

Last night a friend asked me about the origins of the word banjo. I wasn’t sure, so I did some investigating and discovered that banjo comes from the word bandore as pronounced by African slaves – ban’jōre, ban’jō.

A bandore (/bænˈdɔə(r)/ /ˈbændɔə(r)/) is “a musical instrument resembling a guitar or lute, with three, four, or six wire strings, used as a bass to the cittern.” and arrived in English from the Spanish ban’durria / ban’dola or the Portuguese bandurra, which come from the Latin pandūra, from the Greek πανδοῦρα [Source].

A Greek πανδοῦρα (pandoura) was a kind of lute with three strings, and the word was used for other lute-type instruments. It possibly developed from and got it’s name from a type of Sumerian plucked lute known as a pantur (lit. “small bow”). There is also theory that the Greek πανδοῦρα came from or was influenced by Ancient Egyptian instruments.

The πανδοῦρα became popular among the Romans, especially during the first centuries AD and among the common people – members of ‘polite’ society apparently considered it a vulgar instrument suitable only for taverns, frivolity, low merry-making and popular music. [source]

The name Pandora (Πανδώρα) isn’t related to πανδοῦρα, as far as I can discover, and comes from the Greek words πᾶν “all” and δῶρον (gift), and means “all-gifted” or “all-endowed” [source]. I couldn’t resist using it as a punning title though.