Etymology maps: charting various words throughout Europe
November 10, 2013 8:14 PM Subscribe
Redditor sp07 started a Reddit trend: creating etymology maps of Europe, with more to be seen in r/etymologymaps.
I like how oranges are named for China and Portugal.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:25 PM on November 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:25 PM on November 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
The anagram transit map of 2013-14.
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 8:44 PM on November 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by laconic skeuomorph at 8:44 PM on November 10, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'm fascinated by the fact that "orange" in the Netherlands is sinaasappel and not one of the orange/arancia/naranja variations.
So, like William of Orange has nothing to do with the color or the fruit? Or is it Willem of Sinaasappel in Dutch?
posted by Sara C. at 8:56 PM on November 10, 2013
So, like William of Orange has nothing to do with the color or the fruit? Or is it Willem of Sinaasappel in Dutch?
posted by Sara C. at 8:56 PM on November 10, 2013
The name "Orange" is a coincidence to the name of the fruit. His name is Oranje in Dutch.
posted by Thing at 9:04 PM on November 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by Thing at 9:04 PM on November 10, 2013 [4 favorites]
I think that's what struck me as odd. Why is the Dutch word for orange not oranje?
posted by Sara C. at 9:13 PM on November 10, 2013
posted by Sara C. at 9:13 PM on November 10, 2013
I love the continental domination by "ananas".
posted by jeudi at 9:18 PM on November 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by jeudi at 9:18 PM on November 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
Because Oranje is from the name of the Orange dynasty, which it turns comes from the name of a town in France. That the fruit has the same name as the town in a lot of languages is a coincidence, really.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:36 PM on November 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:36 PM on November 10, 2013 [2 favorites]
i'm really confused about Orange. The arabic word for the fruit is the same as the color. which is pronounced burtugal.
did arabic have completely different words for the color, then later decide to use the name for the fruit?
posted by mulligan at 9:40 PM on November 10, 2013
did arabic have completely different words for the color, then later decide to use the name for the fruit?
posted by mulligan at 9:40 PM on November 10, 2013
This kind of thing is very cool, but also really tricky when you get to abstract concepts. For example, here is the proposed map for "dream."
Except that in English, "dream" can mean (A) "a vision for the future" or (B) "a vision you see in your sleep." In many other languages, these concepts are coupled differently. In Russian and Ukrainian, the pairing is "a vision you see in your sleep" and "the state of being asleep." But the proposed map displays the word for (A) for Ukrainian in light blue and the word for (B) for Russian in dark blue. A "mechta" isn't a thing you see in your sleep. And a "son" isn't how you plan for the future.
It's also kind of weird that the map doesn't unite the "son" zone with the "sogno/sonho/sueño" zone. Comparative linguistics is hard!
posted by Nomyte at 9:47 PM on November 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Except that in English, "dream" can mean (A) "a vision for the future" or (B) "a vision you see in your sleep." In many other languages, these concepts are coupled differently. In Russian and Ukrainian, the pairing is "a vision you see in your sleep" and "the state of being asleep." But the proposed map displays the word for (A) for Ukrainian in light blue and the word for (B) for Russian in dark blue. A "mechta" isn't a thing you see in your sleep. And a "son" isn't how you plan for the future.
It's also kind of weird that the map doesn't unite the "son" zone with the "sogno/sonho/sueño" zone. Comparative linguistics is hard!
posted by Nomyte at 9:47 PM on November 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Pineapples just go to show why the UK will never adopt the Euro.
posted by man down under at 11:01 PM on November 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
posted by man down under at 11:01 PM on November 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
Nomyte: "...but also really tricky when you get to abstract concepts."
It's just tricky in general, really. The tea map, for example, kind of elides the fact that most if not all those names for tea -- te, cha, etc. -- ultimately derive from the same Chinese source.
posted by jiawen at 11:32 PM on November 10, 2013
It's just tricky in general, really. The tea map, for example, kind of elides the fact that most if not all those names for tea -- te, cha, etc. -- ultimately derive from the same Chinese source.
posted by jiawen at 11:32 PM on November 10, 2013
These are fascinating. I have a particular interest in Hungarian. One of the most common things you will hear people say about this language is that is unlike any other in Europe, as it belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of languages. This people say, including Hungarians, makes the language difficult to learn for other Europeans, and therefore isolates Hungary from its neighbors. All of this is true. But what these maps show is that there some everyday words in Hungarian are in fact shared with, or similarly derived from, its neighbors. More than I would have thought.
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
posted by vac2003 at 12:07 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
Great post. Thanks for sharing.
posted by vac2003 at 12:07 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
It's just tricky in general, really. The tea map, for example, kind of elides the fact that most if not all those names for tea -- te, cha, etc. -- ultimately derive from the same Chinese source.
That's a valid point, but it doesn't undermine the main point the map illustrates, namely, that the words for "tea" historically spread to Europe by two routes, land and sea. The "dream" map is completely broken as a device for delivering information, and I'm afraid many others might be too.
posted by Nomyte at 12:21 AM on November 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
That's a valid point, but it doesn't undermine the main point the map illustrates, namely, that the words for "tea" historically spread to Europe by two routes, land and sea. The "dream" map is completely broken as a device for delivering information, and I'm afraid many others might be too.
posted by Nomyte at 12:21 AM on November 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Dutchies on mefi, if you're still confused about the origins of Orange (in dutch): get more confused when reading this (Sorry, other tongues, translating this lemma from the Dutch Etymological Dictionary is way over my head)
posted by ouke at 12:57 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by ouke at 12:57 AM on November 11, 2013
This Saturday map is fascinating. Only the UK, Netherlands and Albania(!) name this day after the god Saturn.
posted by telstar at 1:11 AM on November 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by telstar at 1:11 AM on November 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
In the beer map, I'm wondering why (most of) Great Britain/English doesn't get in on the Scandinavian "ol"-type action by virtue of "ale".
posted by aesop at 1:21 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by aesop at 1:21 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
Sara C.: "I'm fascinated by the fact that "orange" in the Netherlands is sinaasappel and not one of the orange/arancia/naranja variations. "It spread from Dutch into all the Scandinavian, Baltic and Russian languages (but with the parts reversed): appelsin / apelsinas / апельсин. It simply means "apple from China".
posted by brokkr at 2:07 AM on November 11, 2013
And orange pop is called Sinas in Dutch. So we drink China?
posted by Akke at 2:20 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by Akke at 2:20 AM on November 11, 2013
These are fascinating. I have a particular interest in Hungarian. One of the most common things you will hear people say about this language is that is unlike any other in Europe, as it belongs to the Finno-Ugric group of languages. This people say, including Hungarians, makes the language difficult to learn for other Europeans, and therefore isolates Hungary from its neighbors. All of this is true. But what these maps show is that there some everyday words in Hungarian are in fact shared with, or similarly derived from, its neighbors. More than I would have thought.
Yeah, it's actually a limitation of these maps that I'm uncomfortable with-- the language families with lots of loanwords from their neighbors (Finno-Ugric and Turkic specifically) appear closer to these neighbors than they actually are. Part of it is the focus on nouns-- the Indo-European languages are so broadly distributed across Eurasia that it's nearly inevitable that nouns with a specific geographic origin (like apples and beer) are going to be loaned to regional families that might not have encountered the object described before contact with IE peoples.
The "bear" map is a better indicator of what base-level nouns are really like-- bears have been everywhere probably before the advent of human language, and as such even some of the IE languages don't agree because of retention of ancient regional root words.
The real obstacle to learning a language like Hungarian if you're not a native speaker is not the vocabulary, anyway. It's the grammar: sentence construction in Finno-Ugric languages is absolutely unrelated to the mechanics of Indo-European languages, with an emphasis on declension of nouns that makes my head hurt when it's explained to me!
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:26 AM on November 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
Yeah, it's actually a limitation of these maps that I'm uncomfortable with-- the language families with lots of loanwords from their neighbors (Finno-Ugric and Turkic specifically) appear closer to these neighbors than they actually are. Part of it is the focus on nouns-- the Indo-European languages are so broadly distributed across Eurasia that it's nearly inevitable that nouns with a specific geographic origin (like apples and beer) are going to be loaned to regional families that might not have encountered the object described before contact with IE peoples.
The "bear" map is a better indicator of what base-level nouns are really like-- bears have been everywhere probably before the advent of human language, and as such even some of the IE languages don't agree because of retention of ancient regional root words.
The real obstacle to learning a language like Hungarian if you're not a native speaker is not the vocabulary, anyway. It's the grammar: sentence construction in Finno-Ugric languages is absolutely unrelated to the mechanics of Indo-European languages, with an emphasis on declension of nouns that makes my head hurt when it's explained to me!
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:26 AM on November 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
It is too bad that there is an arbitrary language cut-off within each country. The 'beer' map for example is more interesting if you know that in Cornish it is 'coref", and in Breton "coreff" both closer to their Celtic cousins in Wales and Galicia and Portugal.
posted by vacapinta at 3:54 AM on November 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by vacapinta at 3:54 AM on November 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
i'm really confused about Orange. The arabic word for the fruit is the same as the color. which is pronounced burtugal.
did arabic have completely different words for the color, then later decide to use the name for the fruit?
According to QI, the name for the colour came after the fruit (at least in England)... before that orange was simply "red", hence why we have Robin "red" breast, or "red" haired people.
posted by Acey at 4:41 AM on November 11, 2013 [6 favorites]
did arabic have completely different words for the color, then later decide to use the name for the fruit?
According to QI, the name for the colour came after the fruit (at least in England)... before that orange was simply "red", hence why we have Robin "red" breast, or "red" haired people.
posted by Acey at 4:41 AM on November 11, 2013 [6 favorites]
vacapinta-- I was wondering about that, too. But I guess the intensifying granularity of languages as you move up the tree means that there's going to be an arbitrary cutoff somewhere. But really it's only language nerds who are going to ask "Why show both Finnish and Estonian, but not both Welsh and Cornish, when their respective deviations are similar?"
In your example, I don't think it's that remarkable that Cornish and Breton, as related languages to Welsh, have close cognates. They'd be more interesting in areas where they're different:
"why does Breton, which is a descendant of Middle Welsh, have a French loanword for X instead of a Modern Welsh cognate?"
"Why are the Welsh and Cornish words for Y of different derivation, but neither is a direct loanword from English? What was going on between the South and Central Brythonic populations that made that happen?"
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:51 AM on November 11, 2013
In your example, I don't think it's that remarkable that Cornish and Breton, as related languages to Welsh, have close cognates. They'd be more interesting in areas where they're different:
"why does Breton, which is a descendant of Middle Welsh, have a French loanword for X instead of a Modern Welsh cognate?"
"Why are the Welsh and Cornish words for Y of different derivation, but neither is a direct loanword from English? What was going on between the South and Central Brythonic populations that made that happen?"
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:51 AM on November 11, 2013
There's definite a loss of information. In the map for beer, it looks like the Nordic countries have a unique term, but it's really just a variant of ale, which exists in several other languages as well.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:58 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:58 AM on November 11, 2013
The "bear" map is a better indicator of what base-level nouns are really like-- bears have been everywhere probably before the advent of human language, and as such even some of the IE languages don't agree because of retention of ancient regional root words.
As I understand it, the popular theory here is that the PIE word for bear became taboo in some languages and was replaced with some euphemism ("brown", "honey-eater", ...).
posted by stebulus at 6:08 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
As I understand it, the popular theory here is that the PIE word for bear became taboo in some languages and was replaced with some euphemism ("brown", "honey-eater", ...).
posted by stebulus at 6:08 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
Maybe interestingly, Puerto Ricans use china for orange instead of naranja, and use toronja to refer to sour oranges.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:11 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 6:11 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
And orange pop is called Sinas in Dutch. So we drink China?
If you are Dutch, you could drink China in china in China.
posted by ersatz at 6:34 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
If you are Dutch, you could drink China in china in China.
posted by ersatz at 6:34 AM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
stebulus: As I understand it, the popular theory here is that the PIE word for bear became taboo in some languages and was replaced with some euphemism ("brown", "honey-eater", ...).
I've heard this a couple of times on MeFi, but my (admitedly cursory) Internet searching didn't reveal anything more. Do you know of any (layman accessible) article or book that talks about this?
posted by Rock Steady at 7:04 AM on November 11, 2013
I've heard this a couple of times on MeFi, but my (admitedly cursory) Internet searching didn't reveal anything more. Do you know of any (layman accessible) article or book that talks about this?
posted by Rock Steady at 7:04 AM on November 11, 2013
I submit that the English-as-in-England word for "beer" is, in fact, "bitter", as in Scandinavia.
posted by atbash at 7:10 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by atbash at 7:10 AM on November 11, 2013
Do you know of any (layman accessible) article or book that talks about [taboo replacement of "bear" in IE languages]?
Not really. I heard about it in an undergrad course on Old English. (It was mentioned in an article suggesting that maybe the name "Grendel" arose from taboo avoidance of a hypothetical word *drengel, "drinker [of blood]" or "drowner" or something.) Maybe there's something in Mallory and Adams' Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture? If I get a chance today I'll swing by the library and have a look.
posted by stebulus at 7:30 AM on November 11, 2013
Not really. I heard about it in an undergrad course on Old English. (It was mentioned in an article suggesting that maybe the name "Grendel" arose from taboo avoidance of a hypothetical word *drengel, "drinker [of blood]" or "drowner" or something.) Maybe there's something in Mallory and Adams' Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture? If I get a chance today I'll swing by the library and have a look.
posted by stebulus at 7:30 AM on November 11, 2013
For the bear story, further Google-fu indicates that it might be fruitful to consult Ullmann's books on semantics.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:45 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:45 AM on November 11, 2013
English has so many synonyms, though. that you can pretty much pick your vocabulary to match any theory. Although I still don't really understand why when English's closest cousins are the Frisian dialects, which are right buggers to learn, the Latinate languages seem so much easier.
posted by Devonian at 7:50 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by Devonian at 7:50 AM on November 11, 2013
Part of the reason is that English seems so different from its closest cousins is because languages don't evolve as animals do. A dog surrounded by snakes will not gradually become more snakelike. However, when the Normans conquered an Anglo-Saxon land, there was tremendous interplay between their languages. Consider as well the influences of Britain's geographical isolation, of Latin as a lingua franca, and how the international use of English has affected both its vocabulary and grammar.
My own totally subjective perspective is that Romance languages have much more familiar vocabularies, even though their structures and grammars are more different than in English. However, it's easier to get over these grammatical differences when shared vocabulary is so similar. It's especially easy to feel this way when you're just starting out, because not only is everything going to be new at that point, but also your initial goals at that time are to get your basic ideas across, as opposed to getting all of the grammar perfectly correct.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:13 AM on November 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
My own totally subjective perspective is that Romance languages have much more familiar vocabularies, even though their structures and grammars are more different than in English. However, it's easier to get over these grammatical differences when shared vocabulary is so similar. It's especially easy to feel this way when you're just starting out, because not only is everything going to be new at that point, but also your initial goals at that time are to get your basic ideas across, as opposed to getting all of the grammar perfectly correct.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:13 AM on November 11, 2013 [3 favorites]
Words and meanings are more salient than grammar, especially to the untrained eye, hence Romance languages seem easier. It's easier to look at a jumbled mass of words and find a word to hang onto than it is to understand the relationships present in a sentence.
posted by Thing at 8:37 AM on November 11, 2013
posted by Thing at 8:37 AM on November 11, 2013
"A dog surrounded by snakes will not gradually become more snakelike. "
I love this sentence. I plan to use it in my everyday life.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 9:07 AM on November 11, 2013 [5 favorites]
I love this sentence. I plan to use it in my everyday life.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 9:07 AM on November 11, 2013 [5 favorites]
On PIE "bear": Mallory and Adams' chapter on flora and fauna was once online in pdf as a free sample. It seems to've gone down now, but I've got a local copy (memail me if interested). At any rate, replacements in the daughter languages are mostly outside their remit; on "bear" they have only this to say:
Seven families is actually quite a good retention rate for a PIE word, so maybe there's no taboo explanation needed, and the culprit is just the ordinary rate of lexical replacement. If there is indeed truth to the taboo replacement story, it probably wasn't operating at the PIE level -- perhaps it was an influence from Siberian languages, as Tropylium suggests at Glen Gordon's blog, where there's good further discussion of this.
The taboo story is also told of "wolf", but the "wolf" etymon *wĺ̥kʷos at least has formal irregularities, metatheses and whatnot, going for it in several of the descendants, which some explain as taboo deformation (think minced oaths). Muddying these waters further, there's "fox" *wl(o)p- which looks related but not regularly.
Returning to "bear", the standard etymon in a word for "brown" is likely wrong. Here's Don Ringe in From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, offering an alternative which seems like garden-variety semantic narrowing:
posted by finka at 2:30 PM on November 11, 2013 [8 favorites]
The word for ‘bear’, *h2ŕ̥tḱos (e.g. OIr art, Lat ursus, Alb ari, Grk árktos, Arm ar, Av arəša-, Skt ŕ̥kṣa, all ‘bear’, and Hit hart(ag)ga- ‘a cultic official, bear-man’), has been similarly explained as a nominalized ‘destroyer’. The root, *h2retḱ-, is otherwise seen only in Skt rákṣas- ‘destruction, damage; night demon’. The Bear also is used to designate Ursa Major (the Plough or Big Dipper) not only in Latin but also in Greek and Sanskrit."Similarly" is to "wolf" *wĺ̥kʷos, potentially explainable as "ripper".
Seven families is actually quite a good retention rate for a PIE word, so maybe there's no taboo explanation needed, and the culprit is just the ordinary rate of lexical replacement. If there is indeed truth to the taboo replacement story, it probably wasn't operating at the PIE level -- perhaps it was an influence from Siberian languages, as Tropylium suggests at Glen Gordon's blog, where there's good further discussion of this.
The taboo story is also told of "wolf", but the "wolf" etymon *wĺ̥kʷos at least has formal irregularities, metatheses and whatnot, going for it in several of the descendants, which some explain as taboo deformation (think minced oaths). Muddying these waters further, there's "fox" *wl(o)p- which looks related but not regularly.
Returning to "bear", the standard etymon in a word for "brown" is likely wrong. Here's Don Ringe in From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, offering an alternative which seems like garden-variety semantic narrowing:
There is also a possible example of PIE *ǵʰw, which would have merged with *gʷʰ (see 3.2.3 (ii) ):On the other hand, Delamarre suggests that the Finnic karhu actually is related to the IE word, borrowed from Indo-Iranian Hr̥kṣas < PIE *h2ŕ̥tḱos, notably preserving the initial laryngeal.PIE *ǵʰwḗr- ~ *ǵʰwér- 'wild animal' (cf. Gk θήρ /tʰę́ːr/, Lith. žvėrìs; Lat. ferus 'wild') > PGmc *berō̄ 'bear' (cf. OE bera, OHG bero).This Germanic word is usually said to reflect a root *bʰer- 'brown'; but while that is plausible semantically (in light of later, historical developments in various languages), an actual PIE word of that shape and meaning is not recoverable, whereas 'wild animal' is securely reconstructable. The etymology given above should therefore perhaps be preferred (pace Seebold 1967b: 115).
posted by finka at 2:30 PM on November 11, 2013 [8 favorites]
Oh, you and your actual, updated sources.
The comments on Glen Gordon's blog are also very interesting.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:00 PM on November 11, 2013
The comments on Glen Gordon's blog are also very interesting.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:00 PM on November 11, 2013
Dammit, can one single QI fact EVER turn out to be true?
posted by Sara C. at 3:11 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Sara C. at 3:11 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
(think minced oaths)
my favorite kind of thereal
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:13 PM on November 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
my favorite kind of thereal
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:13 PM on November 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
Damn reddit is so racist.
What?
Hey guys
Let's not talk about cool words and their awesome origins
Let's all grind axes instead
It'll be fun this time
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:24 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
What?
Hey guys
Let's not talk about cool words and their awesome origins
Let's all grind axes instead
It'll be fun this time
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:24 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
So, is the phrase 'comparing apples to oranges' somewhat lost in translation to Dutch then?
"Comparing Apples to Chinese Apples... yes, those are different, one is from China!"
posted by Arandia at 4:37 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
"Comparing Apples to Chinese Apples... yes, those are different, one is from China!"
posted by Arandia at 4:37 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
on "bear" they have only this to say:
I guess that's from the Mammals entry, yeah? They've also got an entry for Bear itself (pp. 55–56), which goes into a bit more detail on the putative taboo substitutions:
I guess that's from the Mammals entry, yeah? They've also got an entry for Bear itself (pp. 55–56), which goes into a bit more detail on the putative taboo substitutions:
Perhaps [*h2ŕ̥tk̂os was] originally a nominalized adjective, *h2r̥tk̂ós 'destroying' (nominalized by a shift of stress), itself from *h2rétk̂es seen in Av rašah- 'destruction', OInd rákṣas- 'destruction'. Widespread and old in IE. It may be significant that in the northern tier of IE languages (Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, and [partly] Celtic) this inherited word for 'bear', originally itself surely a descriptive substitute for a term now completely vanished, was replaced by newer words, all apparently "taboo" substitutes. Thus in Germanic the bear is 'the brown' one (cf. ON bjǫrn, OE bera [> NE bear], OHG bero), in Baltic 'the ice-fisher' (cf. Lith lokỹs and luõkyti 'break the ice in order to fish'), in Slavic (and Old Indic) the 'honey-eater' (thus OCS medvědǐ 'bear', OInd madhv-ád- 'honey-eater'). It has also been suggested that under the same taboo pressure, some Uralic tribes adopted the Indo-Iranian word for 'bear' which emerges in Finnish as karhu (< Indo-Iranian hr̥kšas).They go on to describe briefly the historical distribution of the brown bear. Then:
As this territory also includes the use of bear teeth in pendants or burial with bear claws [...] it is clear that bears may have also exercised some ritual-symbolic function in prehistoric society. How this role may have applied to specifically PIE society is difficult to determine as the bear is widely embued with certain cultic significance in many cultures, cf. Greek Artemis whose name is derived from that of the 'bear' and served as "Mistress of Animals" and the hunt. Bear-skin dress can be observed in a Hittite ritual where one of the dancers, the LÚhartagga-, member of the 'bear people', is apparently dressed in a bear skin while the term in Old Norse for a warrior, operating out of control in battle-frenzy, is berserkr (> NE berserk), which many take to be literally 'bear-shirted', indicating one either dressed in the manner of a bear or having taken on the characteristics of a bear. The bear, in particular the she-bear, is a widespread symbol of fertility and child-bearing.posted by stebulus at 5:46 PM on November 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
"Similarly" is to "wolf" *wĺ̥kʷos, potentially explainable as "ripper".
Could someone who has the book copy more from the "wolf" entry? I've never heard of that particular association before. Apparently I need to find this book, and soon.
posted by quiet earth at 6:46 PM on November 11, 2013
Could someone who has the book copy more from the "wolf" entry? I've never heard of that particular association before. Apparently I need to find this book, and soon.
posted by quiet earth at 6:46 PM on November 11, 2013
As this territory also includes the use of bear teeth in pendants or burial with bear claws [...] it is clear that bears may have also exercised some ritual-symbolic function in prehistoric society.
I've always been fascinated by the "brown"/"honey-eater" euphemisms for exactly this reason. For some reason there's a strong link between bear trophies and the human archaeological record kind of right around the point where humans become Modern Humans and start getting interesting. Our prehistoric fixation on the bear has always been compelling to me for some reason, and the euphemistic terms in so many different languages have been part of that.
So to find out that the "taboo" story isn't true would make me really sad.
I mean, Clan Of The Cave Bear?! COME ON.
posted by Sara C. at 6:58 PM on November 11, 2013
I've always been fascinated by the "brown"/"honey-eater" euphemisms for exactly this reason. For some reason there's a strong link between bear trophies and the human archaeological record kind of right around the point where humans become Modern Humans and start getting interesting. Our prehistoric fixation on the bear has always been compelling to me for some reason, and the euphemistic terms in so many different languages have been part of that.
So to find out that the "taboo" story isn't true would make me really sad.
I mean, Clan Of The Cave Bear?! COME ON.
posted by Sara C. at 6:58 PM on November 11, 2013
Could someone who has the book copy more from the "wolf" entry?
The book's at the library, not to hand, but the Wiktionary entry for wĺ̥kʷos has some information, with cites.
posted by stebulus at 7:01 PM on November 11, 2013
The book's at the library, not to hand, but the Wiktionary entry for wĺ̥kʷos has some information, with cites.
posted by stebulus at 7:01 PM on November 11, 2013
So, is the phrase 'comparing apples to oranges' somewhat lost in translation to Dutch then?
To answer that would be to compare apples to pears, which is what we do instead. :)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:53 AM on November 12, 2013
To answer that would be to compare apples to pears, which is what we do instead. :)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:53 AM on November 12, 2013
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