Yesterday I came across an interesting Welsh word in one of my Welsh dictionaries (Y Geiriadur Mawr) – mochi [‘mɔxɪ] – which means “ymdrybaeddu fel moch / to wallow as swine”. It comes from moch (pigs), the singular of which is mochyn, from the Proto-Celtic *mokkus (pig), which probably comes from a non-Indo-European root [source].
In English the equivalent of mochi is to pig, which means “(of a sow) to give birth; to live in squalor (also ‘to pig it’); or to devour (food) greedily (also ‘to pig out, to pig oneself, to make a pig of oneself’)” [source]. None of these has quite the meaning of the Welsh word though.
Are there words or phrases in other languages similar to mochi?
The English word pig comes from the Middle English pigge (pig, pigling), which referred a young pig / piglet – adult pigs were known as swine [source], which comes from the Old English swīn (pig, hog, wild boar), from the Proto-Germanic *swīną (swine, pig), from the Proto-Indo-European *sū- (pig), which is also the root of sow (female pig) [source].
Another pig-related word in English is pork (pig meat), which comes from the Middle English pork/porc, via Anglo-Norman from the Old French porc (swine, hog, pig, pork), from the Latin porcus (domestic hog, pig), from Proto-Indo-European *porḱ- (young swine, young pig), which is cognate with the Old English fearh (young pig, hog), and the root of farrow. [source].
Comparing someone to a pig is generally an insult in English – e.g. You eat like a pig! Dirty pig! etc. Also ‘the pigs’ is a slang term for the police. What about in other languages?
In Finnish, the word sika means a pig. The verb sikailla means literally “to act like a pig”. It is used of improper behaviour, often because of excessive alcohol use. The noun can also be used as an insult for people behaving like that. And of course in the feminist sense, all men are pigs.
The Finnish word porsas (piglet) is an old Indo-European loan, and therefore cognate with pork.
When I saw the title of this post, I thought you were going to talk about the Japanese rice cake, mochi [motɕi]. Likewise, someone could mistake the Finnish word sika for the Japanese deer, transliterated either sika or shika [ʃika]. The Finnish word is pronounced [sikɑ].
In Cantonese, you can say a person is ‘more stupid than a pig’, (蠢過隻豬)
‘mocha’ is also a Welsh word for having an affair/sex/playing with/fiddling with something or someone.
For instance; ‘paid mocha efo’r ferch yna’ – don’t ‘mocha’ (playing about/having sex/an affair) with that girl’.
or,
‘paid mocha efo’r peth yna’ (don’t fiddle with that).