Category: Old French (Franceis)

Are you sitting comfortably?

By Simon

One of the words that came up this week in the French Conversation Group I’m part of was chaire [ʃɛʁ], which means chair (a professorship), pulpit, rostrum or throne.

Here are some examples of how it’s used:

  • chaire épiscopale = bishop’s throne
  • chaire pontificale = papal throne
  • être titulaire d’une chaire = to have a personal chair / to be a professor
  • sans chaire = untenured

Source: Reverso

Chaire comes from the Middle French chaire (chair (item of furniture)), from the Old French chaiere, chaere, from the Latin cathedra (armchair, ceremonial chair, the office or rank of teacher or bishop), from Ancient Greek καθέδρα (kathédra – seat; chair; rower’s seat; posterior, bottom; base of a column; sitting posture; teacher’s / professor’s chair; imperial throne), from κατά (katá – down) and ἕδρα (hédra – seat) [source].

The English words chair and chaise come from the same root, via the Old French chaiere, chaere [source].

Cathedral comes from the the Late Latin ecclesia cathedralis (church of a bishop’s seat), from the Latin cathedra [source].

Cathedrale de Metz

Sit comes from the Old English sittan (to sit), from the Proto-Germanic *sitjaną (to sit), from the Proto-Indo-European *sed- (to sit), which is also the root of the Ancient Greek word ἕδρα (seat) [source].

Other words from the same root include:

  • Bengali: কেদারা [ˈke.d̪ä.ɾäˑ] = chair
  • Irish: cathaoir = chair; seat, throne; stool, stump (of tree)
  • Italian: cattedra = desk (of a teacher); teaching post; throne (of a bishop): chair, professorship, chair (archaic)
  • Portuguese: cadeira = chair, subject, stall, post, hip
  • Scottish Gaelic: cathair = chair, seat, bench throne; town, city
  • Spanish: cadera = hip
  • Welsh: cadair = chair, seat; (bishop’s) throne; cathedral; professorship

Source: Wiktionary

Rare Words

By Simon

There’s a rare word in Dutch – raar [raːr] – which is cognate with the English word rare, but means weird, strange, funny, odd or unusual.

It comes from the Middle Dutch rare (rare, unusual), from the Latin rārus (scattered, seldom, few, uncommon, thin, loose), from the Proto-Indo-European *h₁r̥h₁rós, from *h₁reh₁- (to separate) [source].

Here are some examples of how it’s used:

  • Ik heb een raar telefoontje gehad = I got a weird phone call
  • Want je doet een beetje raar = Because you’ve been acting a little weird
  • Dit is vast gewoon een raar misverstand = I’m sure it’s just a weird misunderstanding
  • M’n leven is nu nogal raar = My life is kind of, like, a little weird right now
  • Luister, dit gaat raar klinken … = Look, this is going to sound strange …

Source: Reverso Context

The Dutch words for rare include zeldzaam [ˈzɛlt.saːm] (rare, scarce), which is cognate with the Engish words seldom and seldsome (rare, uncommon), and schaars [sxaːrs] (scarce, rare, sparse), which is cognate with the Engish word scarce [source].

The English word rare comes from the same root, via the Middle English rare [ˈraːr(ə)/ˈrɛːr(ə)] (airy, vacuous, porous, breathable, sparsely spread, uncommon, scare, small, little), and the Old French rare/rere (rare, uncommon) [source].

Other descendants of the Latin word rārus include:

  • Albanian: rrallë [raːɫ] = sparse, infrequent, rare, outstanding
  • Catalan: rar [ˈrar] = rare, strange, odd, thin (of a gas)
  • Danish: rar [ʁɑːˀ] = pleasant, kind, nice
  • Dutch: raar [raːr] = weird, strange, funny, odd, unusual
  • French: rare [ʁɑʁ] = rare, sparse, scarce
  • German: rar [ʁaːʁ] = rare, scarce
  • Spanish: raro [ˈraɾo] = strange, odd, rare
  • Swedish: rar = cute, sweet, loveable, rare

So rare, and its relatives, are strangely funny, wiredly unusual, outstandingly odd, loveably cute, nicely sweet, sparsely scarce and oddly rare words, it seems.

Now here’s a rare bird, a little bittern or Ixobrychus minutus:

Little Bittern

Boring Cloaks

By Simon

The Dutch word saai [saːi] means boring, tedious or dull. It originally meant woven woollen cloth. By the 19th century it was being used to mean annoying, and also came to mean boring, because cloth was thought to be dull and uninteresting apparently [source].

Saai comes from the Middle Dutch saye / saey, from the Old French saie [sɛ] (a short garment worn by ancient Persians, Romans, and Gauls in combat), from the Latin sagum [ˈsa.ɡʊ̃ˑ/ˈsaː.ɡum] (a military cloak), from the Ancient Greek σάγος [ˈsa.ɣos] (cloak, coat, habit), [source] from the Gaulish *sagos [source], from the Proto-Celtic word *sago- (a coarse woollen blanket or mantle) [source] (PDF), from the Proto-Indo-European *sagom (mantle) [source]

The word sagum also exists in English, and refers to a cloak, worn in ancient times by the Gauls, early Germans, and Roman soldiers, made of a rectangular piece of (usually red) coarse cloth and fastened on the right shoulder (see the photo below).

Words that come from the Latin sagum include the Spanish saya [ˈsaʝa] (skirt, petticoat, dress, woman), the Portuguese saia [ˈsajɐ/ˈsaja] (skirt, woman), and the obsolete French word sayon [sɛ.jɔ̃] (cassock, jacket) [source].

Romans

Orbiting Ruts

By Simon

One of the expressions that came up in the French conversation group yesterday was (être) coincé dans une ornière, which means (to be) stuck in a rut.

Coincé [kwɛ̃.se] means stuck, jammed,wedged, stranded, uptight, stuck up or close-minded. It appears in expressions like:

  • etre coincé = to be stuck (fast), to get stuck
  • etre coincé dans = to be marooned in
  • etre coincé entre = to be wedged between
  • etre coincé avec qn = to be stuck with sb
  • etre coincé avec qch = to be stuck with sth
  • rester coincé = to get stuck
  • La clé est coincée dans la serrure = The key is stuck in the lock
  • La porte est coincée = The door’s jammed
  • Il est un peu coincé = He’s a bit uptight

It comes from coincer (to jam, catch (out), nab, stick), which comes from coin (wedge, cornerpiece, corner, area, part, place, spot), from the Old French coin, from the Latin cuneus (wedge, wedge shape, troops in a wedge formation, an army), from the Proto-Indo-European *h₂ḱū (sting), which is also the root of such words as the English coin and cuneiform, the Irish cúinne (angle, corner, nook), the Welsh cŷn (chisel) and the Albanian kunj (peg, spike).

Ornière [ɔʁ.njɛʁ] is a rut, habit, routine or cart track, and appears in such expressions as;

  • suivre l’ornière = to be in a rut
  • sortir de l’ornière = to get out of a rut / spot
  • dans l’ornière = in a rut
  • dans une ornière = cornered
  • avec ornière = potholed

It comes from the Old French ordiere, from the Vulgar Latin *orbitaria, from the Latin orbita (a track or rut made by a wheel, path, track, circuit, orbit, impression, mark), form orbis (rind, circle, orbit).

ruts

Another way to say you’re stuck in a rut in French is s’encroûter, to get into a rut, to get set in one’s ways, to become encrusted (“to encrust onself”).

Sources: Reverso, Wiktionary

Whirling Dustsuckers

By Simon

One of the Dutch words I learnt recently is stofzuiger [stɔfsœyɣər], or literally “dustsucker”. In English you might call it a vacuum, vacuum cleaner, hoover or even a dyson.

Stofzuiger comes from stof (dust) and zuigen (to suck, hoover, be bad at).

When I first learnt this word, I thought that stof might be related to stuff in English, so a Dutch vacuum cleaner would be a “stuffsucker”. However, stof is in fact two words in Dutch that have different meanings and come from different roots.

Stof as in dust comes from the Proto-Germanic *stubą, *stubjuz (dust), from the Proto-Indo-European *dʰeubʰ- (to whisk, smoke, obscure), from *dʰew- (to whirl, waft, stink, shake; steam, haze, smoke) [source].

Related words include:

  • huisstof = household dust
  • stofdoek = duster, dust cloth
  • stoffen = to dust, to remove dust from
  • stoffig = dusty
  • stofvrij = dustfree
  • stofwolk = dust cloud
  • stofzuigen = to vacuum / hoover
  • stofzuigerslang = vacuum cleaner hose (“dust-sucker-snake”)

The other stof means matter, material, substance, fabric or curriculum. It comes from the Middle Dutch stoffe, from the Old French estophe / estoffe, from estoffer (to decorate, garnish), from Old High German stoffōn (to stop, halt, stuff, insert), from the Proto-West Germanic *stuppōn (to cram, plug, stuff). The English word stuff comes from the same root.

Related words include:

  • afvalstof = waste product (“waste-stuff”)
  • brandstof = fuel (“burning-stuff”)
  • delfstof = mineral (“excavated-stuff”)
  • kleurstof = dye, colourant (“colour-stuff”)
  • koolstof = coal (“coal stuff”)
  • stikstof = nitrogen (“suffocating-stuff”)
  • voedingstof = nutrient (“food-stuff”)
  • waterstof = hydrogen (“water-stuff”)
  • zuurstof = oxygen (“sour-stuff”)

Are there interesting names for vacuum cleaners in other languages?

Henri stofzuiger

Bed litter

By Simon

What links litter and beds?

Well, back in about 1300 a litter was a bed. Later on it came to mean a bed-like vehicle carried on the shoulders. By the the 15th it also referred to straw used for bedding, particularly for animals, and then the offspring of an animal born at the same time.

By the 18th century litter could also be “scattered oddments” or “disorderly debris”, and by the 19th century litter was straw bedding for animals and the animal waste in it.

The verb to litter originally meant to provide with bedding, and later came to mean to give birth to, to strew with objects, and to scatter in a disorderly way.

Litter comes from the Anglo-Norman litere (portable bed), from the Old French litiere (litter, stretcher, bier, straw, bedding), from the Medieval Latin lectaria (litter), from the Latin lectus (bed, lounge, sofa, dining-couch), from the Proto-Indo-European *legh- (to lie down, lay).

From the same PIE root we also get such words as the English lie, lay, low, law and lair, the Irish luigh (to lie down) and luí (bed), and the Welsh gwely (bed) and lle (place, location).

Shetland dialect

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionary

Artists’ Donkeys

By Simon

Yesterday while preparing the latest episode of the Radio Omniglot podcast, which is about Dutch, I found that there are quite a few words of Dutch origin in English.

Some come directly from Dutch, some via other languages, such as French, and some come via Dutch from other languages.

  • avast – from the Dutch hou vast (hold tight)
  • bluff – probably from the Dutch bluffen (to brag)
  • booze – from the Middle Dutch busen (to drink to excess)
  • brandy – from the Dutch brandewijn (“burnt wine”).
  • cookie – from the Dutch koekje (little cake)
  • easel – from the Dutch (schilders)ezel (“painter’s donkey”)
  • iceburg – from the Dutch ijsberg (“ice mountain”)
  • knapsack – from the Middle Dutch knapzak (“snack bag”)
  • bamboo – from the Dutch bamboe, from the Portuguese bambu, from the Malay bambu, from the Kannada ಬಮ್ಬು (bambu)
  • cricket (the insect) – from the Middle English creket/crykett/crykette, from the Old French crequet/criquet (locust) from criquer (to make a cracking sound; creak), from the Middle Dutch kricken (to creak, crack)
  • cricket (the game) – perhaps from a Flemish dialect of Dutch met de krik ketsen (to chase a ball with a curved stick)

I particularly like schildersezel, or “painter’s donkey”, for an easel. It’s perhaps a relative of the clothes horse, which is also known as a drying horse or garment donkey, apparently.

The word ezel means donkey, ass, mule, fool, idiot, easel, (work)bench or trestle. Related words include:

  • ezelin = jenny, she-ass
  • ezelsveulen = foal of a donkey; utter idiot, hopeless fool
  • ezelachtig = asinine
  • ezeldrijver = donkey-driver
  • ezelsbruggetje = memory aid, mnemonic (“little donkey bridge”)
  • ezelsoor = dog-ear (turned down part of a page – “donkey’s ear”)

Here’s a tune I wrote called The Dancing Donkeys / Asynnod sy’n Dawnsio:

_B110826

Purple Fleas

By Simon

une puce puce (a purple flea)

What do the words purple and flea have in common?

Well in French, there is one word – puce [pys] – that means both purple and flea. It also means (micro)chip or bullet point.

Here are a few expressions featuring puce:

  • marché aux puces = flea market
  • ma puce = my love, sweetie, honey, dear, sweetheart
  • puce électronique = microchip
  • puce d’ordinateur = computer chip
  • carte à puce = smart card
  • puce mémoire = memory card
  • puce d’eau = water flea
  • puce de sable/mer = sand flea
  • liste à puce = bulleted list
  • pucer = to chip, tag
  • aller faire téter les puces = to go to sleep
  • donner la botte aux puces = to go to bed
  • avoir la puce à l’oreille = to be vigiliant
  • mettre la puce à l’oreille = to suspect, worry

If you were so inclined, you could say: Ma puce, une puce puce puce une puce puce avec une puce puce, or “Sweetie, a puce flea is tagging a puce flea with a puce tag”, but that would be rather silly.

Puce comes from the Old French pu(l)ce (flea), from the Latin pūlicem, from pūlex (flea), from the Proto-Indo-Euopean plúsis (flea). This is also the root of the English word flea, via the Proto-Germanic *flauhaz.

The colour puce is a dark redish-brown or a brownish-purple. It was first used to refer to this colour in about the 17th century in French, and possibly a lot earlier, and in the 18th century in English. It refers to the colour of bloodstains on flea-ridden bedding which would appear as a result of the fleas biting people and leaving their droppings or being squashed.

Puce was apparently a favourite colour of Marie Antoinette, and became fashionable in 19th century Paris.

There are a couple of other words that sound simliar to puce: pouce (thumb, inch) and pousse (growth, shoot). Both are pronounced [pus] though, so there should be no confusion.

Sources: Reverso, Wiktionary, Wikipedia

Longitudinal Cohorts

By Simon

50 years ago this week a longitudinal cohort study known as the 1970 British Cohort Study or BCS70 started. The aim was to follow the lives of as many as possible of the 17,287 people born in England, Wales and Scotland during that week (5-11 April). Similar studies were started before then, and have been started since.

BCS70 has collected information on health, physical, educational and social development, and economic circumstances, and so on. It has become a vital source of evidence on key policy areas such as social mobility, education, training and employment, and economic insecurity [source].

1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) illustration

More information about BCS70:
https://cls.ucl.ac.uk/cls-studies/1970-british-cohort-study/
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/4/836/686544
https://www.youtube.com/user/CLScohort/videos

See some of the participants in BCS70:

Why am I telling you this?

Well, I am one of those 17,287 people, and today is my 50th birthday.

Previously I knew only one other person who shared a birthday with me, and one with a birthday the day before. Recently the people at BCS70 set up a Facebook group for participants in the survery, and I found there are quite a few people with the same birthday as me.

It’s interesting to get to know them, and to share memories and stories. For example, it snowed on the day I was born, and quite a few other people in the group have said that there was snow on their birthdays as well. Today, by contrast, it started as a warm, sunny day, and is starting to cloud over as I write this.

Another interesting thing I’ve noticed in the group is that people are using their day of birth to refer to themselves. Today, for example, we 9ers are all wishing each other a happy birthday, yesterday it was the 8ers, and tomorrow will be the 10ers.

On this day in 1970 Paul McCartney apparently accounced the official break-up of the Beatles [source]. Other sources say it happened on 10th April. I had nothing to do with it.

The word cohort in this context means “A demographic grouping of people, especially those in a defined age group, or having a common characteristic” [source].

It comes from the Old French cohorte (cohort, a division of the Roman legion), from the Latin cohors (court; farmyard or enclosure; retinue; circle, crowd; tenth part of a legion; ship’s crew; bodyguard; military unit of 500 men), from co- (with) and hortus (garden) [source]

The word longitudinal in this context means “sampling data over time rather than merely once” [source]

It comes from the Latin longitūdō (length, longitude), from longus (far, long) and -tūdō (-ness: suffix for forming nouns) [source]

Sponge Mushrooms

By Simon

In Swedish, I learned this week, there are two words for mushroom: svamp [svamp] (fungus, mushroom, toadstool, sponge) and champinjon [ɧampɪnˈjuːn] (mushroom) [source].

Svamp comes from the Old Swedish svamper (fungus, mushroom), from Old Norse svampr / svǫppr (sponge, mushroom, ball), from the Proto-Germanic *swammaz / swambaz (sponge, mushroom, fungus, swamp), which is also the root of the English word swamp [source].

The Old English word swamm (mushroom, fungus, sponge), and the Middle English swam (swamp, muddy pool, bog, marsh; fungus, mushroom), come from the same root as well [source].

Mushroom was borrowed from the Anglo-Norman musherum / moscheron (mushroom), from the Old French moisseron (mushroom), possibly from the Old French mosse / moise (moss), from the Frankish *mosa (moss) [source]

Champinjon was borrowed from the French champignon (mushroom, fungus, accelerator), from the Vulgar Latin *campāniolus (grows in the field), from the Late Latin campāneus (pertaining to fields), from Latin campānia (level country), which is also the root of the words campaign and champagne.

Apparently champinjon is used to refer to mushrooms used as food, and was borrowed into Swedish in 1690 [source], while svamp refers to mushrooms and fungi in general.

Svamp