I’m too full of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and three kinds of pie to post anything that would demand thought and effort on my part; fortunately, a correspondent has sent me this link, in which six writers discuss their book-collecting habits, so that I need only point you to it and perhaps quote the beginning of Gary Shteyngart’s entry:
I’m big on sniffing books. The old Soviet ones really have this strong smell, reminding me, for some reason, of tomato soup in a cheap Soviet cafeteria.
Thanks, Paul!
Thank you Languagehat! The Shteyngart entry made me laugh for two reasons… I have a lot of old Soviet books with peculiar (sour?) smells, plus a Russian friend who came to dinner today was telling us about The Adventures of Nils and the Wild Geese.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Hmm. Shteyngart, is in his usual mode – very sarcastic. Old Soviet books certainly had specific smells, but the smell depended on when it was published and where – the quality of paper, ink, binding steadily deteriorated from 1950’s to perestroika.
Just some minutes before reading this I have finished a post on some recently purchased old Soviet books. They lay in a pile on my table, exhaling their unmistakable and nostalgic smell.
sniffing is another of the long list of things electronic readers excise from the book experience.
Shteyngart’s shelves look horribly tidy and clean. And there weren’t tomato soups in cheap Soviet cafeteria, nor in expensive ones. They mostly smelled of borsch or schi.
Is “schi” by any chance “cabbage” ? In the context of smelly things, the word reminds me of that wretched Korean delicacy “kimchi”.
Щи [shchi] is (or are; it’s a plural) cabbage soup. To get into hot water in Russian is попасть как кур во щи [popást’ kak kur vó shchi] ‘to fall like a rooster into cabbage soup’; I love it partly because it’s got one of those stressed prepositions I’m so fond of (the last two words are stressed VO shchi).
I remember those stressed prepositions !! But no concrete example … Does Щи (or whatever a singular cabbage is called) have anything to do with kimchi ?
No, shchi has nothing to do with kimchi))Russian shchi is a thick soup of sour cabbage, potatoes, meat and onion. Tastes great the day after it was cooked, with rye bread and a spoonful of sour cream (smetana).
I’m asking about the words “Щи” and “kimchi”, not the comestibles, which are clearly different (there are n > x varieties of kimchi). Since both comestibles are made from sour/fermented cabbage (among other things), and the words sound similar, I thought there might be an etymological connection.
I recently had a few books I bought in Russia fixed (the covers were coming off), and the binder mentioned how crappy the glue they used was. Perhaps that was part of the smell.
What means “sour” cabbage?
Щи is the name of the soup (delicious when made by babushka, but not as prepared in Russian cafeterias); it isn’t the Russian word for “cabbage,” which is капуста. Щи, in my experience, is more often made with fresh cabbage, although there is a variation made with sauerkraut (which is obviously what is meant by “sour cabbage” supra).
The standard Russian etymological dictionary, Vasmer’s, propounds several complicated theories about the origin of щи, but the sum and total is “origin unknown.” However, any connection to kimchi–straightforwardly derived from Middle Chinese for “soaked vegetable”–seems farfetched, and isn’t among the possibilities mentioned by Vasmer.
The Russian word “щи” goes back to “шти” and further to “съти” – a common word for any soup. There’s an opinion that this word came from Danish “sky” which, in its turn, came from French “jus”.
Isn’t shchi cognate with English stew? And is there a merit in an information-value sort of an approach which would dictate that the most important foodstuffs will have the shortest words to designate them (shchi is just two sounds in Russian)
There is definitely a relation between kimchi and shchi, albeit a biochemical one rather than photeic or linguistic. Sour cabbage (unlike canned sauerkraut of Western supermarkets) is a naturally fermented Brassicaceae vegetable (wild strains of lactate producing bacteria helped by appropriate salt concentration).
BTW Sashura – I also wanted to argue that tomato soup was nonexistent in Soviet cafeteria, but then remembered that cafeteria soups and stews were frequently made with the addition of crude canned tomato paste, to blunt bad smells I guess…
(wild strains of lactate producing bacteria helped by appropriate salt concentration)
Thank you! Not so obvious.
My father loved shchav — sorrel soup. I wonder if there’s a shared etymology.
MOCKBA: No, no connection. Etymonline says:
stew (n.)
c.1300, “vessel for cooking,” from stew (v.). Later “heated room” (late 14c.). The noun meaning “stewed meat with vegetables” is first recorded 1756; Irish stew is attested from 1814. The obsolete slang meaning “brothel” (mid-14c., usually plural, stews) is from an earlier sense of “public bath house,” carried over from O.Fr. and reflecting the reputation of such houses.
stew (v.)
c.1400, “to bathe in a steam bath,” from O.Fr. estuver (Fr. étuver) “bathe, stew,” of uncertain origin. Common Romanic (cf. Sp. estufar, It. stufare), possibly from V.L. *extufare “evaporate,” from ex- “out” + *tufus “vapor, steam,” from Gk. typhos “smoke.” Cf. O.E. stuf-bæþ “hot-air bath;” see stove. Meaning “to boil slowly, to cook meat by simmering it in liquid” is attested from early 15c. The meaning “to be left to the consequences of one’s actions” is from 1650s, from figurative expression to stew in one’s own juices. Slang stewed “drunk” first attested 1737.
попасть как кур во щи [popást’ kak kur vó shchi] ‘to fall like a rooster into cabbage soup’
There is an ongoing debate about this one. One school of thought argues that it is not a rooster in the cabbage soup, but a rooster in a pluck (попасть как кур в ощип), with one extended theory that it was originally кур во щип, ship being an old bird-trap. Another, equally vociferous, school argues that it is indeed kur (rooster) in shchi with the meaning that originally shchi cabbage soup was lenten, lean food cooked without animal fat, i.e.vegetarian, so having a rooster in it spoiled the spiritually elevating qualities of the dish. It seems that the current consensus is that both versions have equal rights of usage.
There are numerous versions, but the two distinct classes of shchi are when one is with fresh cabbage (boiled to add to stock) and the other is with pickled or sour cabbage (kislaya kapusta, also called provençal if it contains a smattering of cranberries-klyukva) added at the last stage and hardly boiled.
And the commenter above who said it is best if it stays for a day is absolutely right. There is an old joke. Hosts ask unexpected guests: ‘Would you like some sutochnye (day old) schi?’ ‘Oh, yes, thank you!’ ‘Good, then come tomorrow!’
It’s ancient Norwegian wisdom that får-i-kål is better at the second boiling. I remember a chemist looking into it a decade or so ago and explaining it with some bitter substance being broken down to sugars. If I had a real computer now and not my phone, I’d try and track it down.
JC, thank you for the French etymologies around the two stew words, which have the same origin. There is also une étuve ‘a (super)heated room or container’ (eg a sauna, sweatlodge, stewing pot), from OF estuve ‘bathhouse’. It is not too far from ‘bathhouse’ to ‘brothel’ at a time when the Church frowned upon personal cleanliness and nudity at public baths. The Spanish verb estufar reminds me that my Occitan-speaking grandmother used to make an estoufat (perhaps now written estofat), which I vaguely remember as a very thick kind of stew.
Anna: The Russian word “щи” goes back to “шти” and further to “съти” – a common word for any soup. There’s an opinion that this word came from Danish “sky” which, in its turn, came from French “jus”.
I gather that you do not share this opinion of a French-Danish-Russian path of borrowing. A three-step sequence requiring that an old Russian word for a common food would come from a Danish borrowing of a common French word with a different meaning seems far-fetched. What does Danish sky mean and how is it pronounced? (both sk and y can represent different sounds in different languages).
Is OF estuve inherited from Vulgar, or is it from Germanic? It does look suspiciously similar to the stove set. I’ve been having the impression that the derivation of the Germanic word from Latin is a little tenuous for lack of attested forms, but if there’s a whole Mediterranean menu on the table that shouldn’t be a problem..
TE, perhaps Etienne would be able to answer you. I agree with you that stove might well be part of a set of derivatives from a Germanic root, some of them borrowed into Latin, but I can’t be sure.
I have plenty of Soviet books for sale – you may downolad the list from http://www.mipco.com/RUSSIAN%20RARE%20BOOKS.doc
http://www.mipco.com/RUSSIAN%20RARE%20BOOKS.doc
Soviet books for sale are here
Sashura: a rooster in a pluck (попасть как кур в ощип), with one extended theory that it was originally кур во щип, ship being an old bird-trap.
Where did you find “pluck” in the sense of “cage” ? Perhaps “coop” is the word you want ?
@marie-lucie:
estoufat
Cf. New Orleans étouffée, stew (usually shellfish) over rice.
Marie-Lucie: Danish sky is pronounced [ʃy]. Here’s a recipe for estofat de vedella amb verdures.
Trond: Here’s the Etymonline entry for stove:
mid-15c., “heated room, bath-room,” from M.L.G. or M.Du. stove, both meaning “heated room,” which was the original sense in English; a general West Germanic word (cf. O.E. stofa “bath-room,” Ger. Stube “sitting room”) of uncertain relationship to similar words in Romance languages (cf. It. stufa, Fr. étuve “sweating-room;” see stew (v.)). One theory traces them all to V.L. *extufare “take a steam bath.” The meaning “device for heating or cooking” is first recorded 1610s. Stove pipe is recorded from 1690s; as a type of tall cylindrical hat for men, from 1851.
Stu: I used ‘pluck’ as a verbal noun from the sense ‘pull the feathers from (a bird’s carcass) to prepare it for cooking’. That’s what ощип means in Russian, from ощипывать to pluck. Щип as a bird-trap, if it did exist, must have come from щипать – to pinch, indicating perhaps a pincer-like mechanism.
får-i-kål is better at the second boiling
then there is Danish twice baked potato (and the legend of refried beans which defy expectations by not being fried twice, right?)
So stew / étouffée belong with steam, and shchi with satiation? BTW Fasmer discounts a possible link with schavel “sorrel”.
кур в ощип sounds suspiciously like folk etymology. BTW none of my corresponds tonight put the stress on VO shchi
the two distinct classes of shchi only in big cities. Up North in the countryside it is a fish soup with barley and often w/o cabbage. And in the mid-Russia countryside one of the most prominent types of shchi is awesome gray shchi (made from fermented top leaves of cabbage heads; since these aren’t durable, and since the top leaves are discarded before shipping, they are almost unknown outside of the villages). Kind of like the “choicest throwaway” greens of America’s soul food I guess.
My father loved shchav — sorrel soup. I wonder if there’s a shared etymology.
That’s interesting, Vasmer seems to admit the possibility that shchi is linked to protoslavic ščаvь.
Schava, schavey, schavel’ (the latter is perhaps most common) is indeed popular in soups.
cafeteria soups and stews were frequently made with the addition of crude canned tomato paste,
hm, that’s right, but I can’t remember any dishes made with it except perhaps goulyash.
the binder mentioned how crappy the glue they used was. Perhaps that was part of the smell.
that’s interesting, what are the dates? It differed depending on the period and the publisher.
re stress in ‘kur vo shchi’: I can vouch as native speaker that the stress is on VO.
And Ozhegov/Shvedova use the proverb as an example of the cases where the dictionary indicates stresses in phraseological constructions:
В иллюстративных примерах и фразеологических единицах ударение, как правило, не даётся, если слова, входящие в них, сохраняют свое обычное ударение. Оно даётся только в отдельных случаях, когда могут возникнуть затруднения, напр.: КУР: как кур во’ щи попасть.
(from slovari.ru)
Thanks. Discussing etymology from my mobile with no online references is sloppy even after my standards.
I knew the Vulgar word was unattested, but didn”t remember the Romance forms. I suppose “uncertain relationship” means that a loan could have taken place in either direction. Or both: VL > Gmc. > Romance. Though with no suitable Gmc. root on offer, there’s no particular reason to believe in a Germanic origin. I think the word belongs to the same layer of Latin loans as ‘kettle’.
как кур во’ щи попасть.
That would be more believable because it keeps the rhythmic structure of anapaest (third syllables under stress). But IMVHO попал как кур во ЩИ would adopt much more popular structure of iambic trimeter. So the stressed syllable may be dictated by the order of the words here?
Timofeev’s influential 1961 book “Правильно ли мы говорим?” reflected Khurschev’s abortive attempt to modernize Russian grammar and spelling, which caused quite a bit of knee-jerk reaction in the literary circles. One of Timofeev’s pet peeves has been about that poor bird in the cabbage soup … but I couldn’t hep thinking that he didn’t really have a proof. A. Reformatskyactually wrote a review of Timofeev’s treatise, pointing out that the “soup version” could be found in centuries-old sources (and even references to chicken shti, but never to “oshchip”). Regional versions with other creatures ending up in other soups were cited, too. But Timofeev just concluded that he uncovered a “very old error” 🙂 Which in turn prompted Lev Uspensky to quip about a new fashion of rewriting centuries-old folk wisdoms (Timofeev, better known for writing satirical couplets and hit songs before his foray into lingustics, passed away by then, but his banner was carried on by Alexey Yugov, of “Слово о полку Игореве” fame).
(I already mentioned Strugatski’s Escape Attempt, also from the 1960s, where the professional linguist character famously bungles old proverbs … which sort of reflects the actual heated Timofeevian discussion).
So it appears that “ОЩИП” is a no-go. There was also a more recent attempt to save the proverbial chicken from the soup, the already-cited bird-trap hypothesis of Valery Mokienko, the author of recently published “Почему мы так говорим?”. But even Mokienko doesn’t consider the “soup version” erroneous. He’s just like, maybe there was more to the hapless chicken…
My fav shchi expression is a different one BTW: “не лаптем щи хлебаем”
I always have felt that pea soup (pease porridge) is zestier after a day or two at room temperature. I’ve never tried 9 days old.
I frequently buy cheap Indian reprints of public domain orientalist books, and many (besides being on flisy paper) have a certain odor.
Thank you Languagehat! The Shteyngart entry made me laugh for two reasons… I have a lot of old Soviet books with peculiar (sour?) smells, plus a Russian friend who came to dinner today was telling us about The Adventures of Nils and the Wild Geese.
re. chicken in the soup, I like the 50-year journey from prescriptivist ‘Do we speak correctly?’ to reflectionist ‘Why do we speak the way we do?’
In the linked blog-post, has anyone noticed the little box with what looks like a joy-stick on Pullman’s desk? What is it?
Stube, stew and stove are surprising enough, but what is kettle from?
(Occurs in German as the expected Kessel. The Star Wars planet of the same name had its vowels reverse-engineered and appears as Kossal in the German translation.)
One of the seven wonders of the world was the Meatball at Rhodes (Fleischk(o)loss).
Quo’ Etymonline:
O.E. cetil (Mercian), from L. catillus “deep pan or dish for cooking,” dim. of catinus “bowl, dish, pot.” A general Germanic borrowing (cf. O.S. ketel, O.Fris. zetel, M.Du. ketel, O.H.G. kezzil, Ger. Kessel). Spelling with a k- (c.1300) probably is from influence of O.N. cognate ketill. The smaller sense of “tea-kettle” is attested by 1769.
Awesome!
Meatball at Rhodes
I thought the meatball was at the island of Polyphemus, the cy-klops.
JC, DM, I am very glad to hear about ‘kettle’ – we can’t escape Latin! Perhaps it also meant ‘cauldron’?
Norse and Norman: in Normandy there are many family names of Norse origin. One of them is Anquetil (the name of a famous champion cyclist in my youth), apparently from Arn’s kettle (or rather ketill).
Anquetil […], apparently from Arn’s kettle (or rather ketill)
Or from a compound name Arnketill. In modern Norwegian the first element is found with or without the r, the second element usually as -kjell. Arnkjell is unremarkable today, Ankjell somewhat more dialectal, Arnk(j)etil would sound Icelandic. Ank(j)etil looks wrong for some reason — maybe the retaining of -eti- and the loss of -r- don’t overlap dialectally.
It’s suggested that the use of Ketill as a name originated as a nicname meaning “chubby”, but the name is special in having found its way into the traditional compound name system already in Old Norse, being compounded with names of gods and animals (the latter probably originally totems). I’m wondering if ketill may have been used for some sort of religious or magical gear.
Caesar urbem occupatam habet.
That’s the modern German meaning. (Also generalized to topography – circular valleys, and surrounded armies.)
TE: I used Arn’s kettle as a probable translation, which I read about years ago. Not knowing Norse or any Scandinavian languages, I did not want to be too specific in my analysis. From the Norse compound to Norman/French Anquetil, the rules of change would probably not have been quite the same as within the individual Scandinavian languages.
I’m wondering if ketill may have been used for some sort of religious or magical gear.
One of the masterpieces of Celtic metallurgy is the Gundestrup cauldron, on which is depicted another cauldron or perhaps large bowl or basin into which a human figure is shown apparently dipping another human figure, one of a series. Other figures on the actual cauldron suggest that the scene represents a mythical rite – perhaps dead warriors are being given a kind of posthumous “baptism” which will give them immortality, or some such thing. Could the mythical cauldron, etc be Arn’s kettle?
m-l: My comment was just meant as complementary information: «Incidentally, the form most resembling the modern Norman name is the one I’d deem least likely in modern Norwegian.»
the Gundestrup cauldron
Thanks! A more religious or magical kettle is hard to imagine.
But I don’t think the compound Arnketill is more than a name. Torkjell (various spellings) was and is dirt common, and Grimk(j)ell is the usual rendering of the name of the English bishop following king Olaf Haraldsson, Grimcytel. Thinking of it, this seems to imply that the two forms ketill and kell were present already in ON.
Oh. Donnerkeil “belemnite”, literally “thunder wedge”. As in “lightning bolt”.
If that’s what’s going on here, Grimkjell would make sense as “the grim war ax” rather than “the grim kettle”. 🙂
(That said, I know full well that Germanic compound names don’t need to make sense. Hildegund(e) (f.) “fightfight”, Bathilde (f.) “fightfight”, Friedegunde (f.) “peacewar”, Gundefried (m.) “warpeace”, Karlmann (m.) “guyman”… Indeed, arn “the eagle” doesn’t make sense with either “kettle” or “wedge”.)
TE: Grimk(j)ell is the usual rendering of the name of the English bishop following king Olaf Haraldsson, Grimcytel. Thinking of it, this seems to imply that the two forms ketill and kell were present already in ON.
By then the two forms might have belonged to different dialects, so that the longer form was familiar but no longer used by speakers who now used kell.
Does or did plain kell have another meaning, such as the one David suggests?
DM: Those compound names must have started with the ones that made sense. But names become identified with the persons who hold them, and therefore tend to lose their meaning in the consciousness of speakers even if the words themselves are still in use (eg Faith, Hope, Prudence; Rose, Heather, Daisy; Craig, Brook, Rock), so all sorts of compound names were eventually created, whether they actually made sense or not. Such semantically strange compounds could also have resulted from recombining elements of the names of different relatives to form names for new babies.
This is known to have been practiced in Old High German times: the compound names of the parents were taken apart and reassembled at random to make names for the children, regardless of meaning. Indeed, most of the elements (like the many, many synonyms for war/fight) had already lost their meaning by then.
There’s evidence that this had been going on since much longer ago. Many think the Siegfried legend started from the battle in the Teutoburg forest, with the dragon being the worm-shaped, glittering Roman army and Siegfried (“victory” + “peace”) being Arminius. Arminius was named by the Romans after his blue eyes, after the blue mineral armenium, so we have no clue about his original Germanic name*, unless we count the fact that his father is said to have been Segimer… that would be Siegmar, “victory” + “famous”, the name of the current environment minister of Germany.
* The popular attempt to see Hermann in it is untenable.
A German once told me that archaeological evidence showed that never was any big battle in the Teutoburg forest. He believed that a Roman general more or less invented the battle (and the formidable adversary Arminius) to explain why he had run out of money. The real reason being corruption. I think I said this once before, and somebody who knows something told me it’s wrong, but here I am repeating the half-remembered tale again.
“… that would be Siegmar, “victory” + “famous”, the name of the current environment minister of Germany”
The name of the current environment minister of Germany (since October 2009) is Norbert Röttgen from the CDU (Christian-Democrats). Sigmar Gabriel (SPD= Socialists) was his predecessor. I hope you’re not stuck in a time warp where the last German elections haven’t taken place yet.
But if you are, let us know and we’ll give you some stock tips.
An interpretation of the Gundestrup cauldron image that I have read is that the dipping restores dead warriors to life to fight again. Cf. Achilles’ acquisition of invincibility by dipping.
[…] that the two forms ketill and kell were present already in ON
Of course they were, and I knew that. What I somehow lost here was a thought about the name-translation from Old English -cytel to Old Norse -kell in a compound: That the compound form -kell was established in ON and perceived as a compound form. If Ketill was free for compounding, or the mental connection between the forms had been lost, I’d have expected the full form. In recent times, when Kjell became common as a freestanding name, the difference between the two forms became dialectal (with Kjetil leaving a parish in one part of the country and Kjell settling in a different part).
Kell had no other meaning (that I’m aware of). And I think Grimcytel makes it clear that “kettle” is the intended word here. German Keil with a diphtong corresponds to ON kíli with a long vowel, Scandinavian kil(e) “wedge; long, narrow bay”. If my dictionary is to be trusted, the meaning “wedge” is borrowed from LG kil.
Not my dictionary as in me working on it, obviously. They seem to manage surprisingly well without my collaboration.
I was reminded this evening (when my son hummed some choral music in a way that sounded as if tympani were involved) that some of my ancestors were named Kettlestrings. My father’s father’s mother’s mother, I think. It appears that this name is related to the Norse name and word that have been under discussion here.
They’re currently digging up the remains of the battle near Osnabrück, next to a mountain unimaginatively named Kalkriese “limestone giant”. It’s quite close to that forest.
*headdesk* I’m otherwise aware of Merkozy. Um. Gabriel is still in politics, so I recently heard him mentioned on TV… *slinking away in shame*
Awww. 🙁 I was guessing it had the other ei. The word doesn’t occur in my dialect (which keeps them separate)…
An idea related to the Gundestrup cauldron: Maybe laukaz of formulaic Runic inscriptions meant or alluded to “ritual bath” (ON laugr “bath”) rather than the enigmatic “onion, leech” (ON laukr)? Sadly, I think phonology (k instead of g) pretty much forbids it.
Anyway, the oldest name of the L-rune seems to have been either laguz “body if water” or laukaz “leech”, which might suggest some mix-up between forms — or that the unrelated but phonologically in-between laugaz at some time was too holy? If so, the seemingly prosaic laugardagr “Saturday (lit. bath’s day)” might have had religious significance as well. Or be a result of identification with saturare “fill up; drench”.
Leek, right? (German Lauch or… Poree, pronounce with English ee but stressed on the first syllable.)
(Further emphasized by the fact that /k/ and /g/ almost certainly weren’t [k] and [g] but [kʰ] and [ɣ] – even less easy to confuse.)
Huh. I didn’t know a cognate of Latin lacus was attested in Germanic at all (apart of course from loans like lake, German Lacke “puddle” and German Lachmöwe “black-headed gull”). Do you know details? 🙂
Oh. German Lauge “lye, alkalic solution”, and probably English lye as well, right? I suppose Laugenbrezeln are sacred to Oktoberfest initiates…
Lachmöwe “black-headed gull”
I suppose that -möwe by itself means some kind of gull. Then French une mouette ‘seagull’ must be a diminutive of a Germanic word. The TLFI quotes Old English maew (modern mew), borrowed into Anglo-Norman as mave or mauve, hence Middle French moete (in 3 syllables) and similar words.
If so, then OE [w] was borrowed into NF as [v/, before being lost intervocalically in French. But elision of [v] has occurred during the history of English (eg lord from OE hlafwaerd where f = [v], or laundry which must be from an OF or NF lavanderie). I don’t know whether this development is attributed to French influence or not, but it is current in contemporary French in some regions, notably Normandy where I grew up: when speaking very casually I say vous saez rather than vous savez, or aec for avec, etc. (I don’t think this is a leftover from the Norman period! just a tendency of the speech of the region).
Some of the current French maritime vocabulary comes from Norse, because it was borrowed into Norman, where it stayed for centuries before becoming part of general vocabulary as a result of the 19th century popularity of “sea bathing” on the beaches of Normandy (the closest ones to Paris). So French people learned words from the Norman dialect, such as une vague and un crabe, although une mouette must have long been used along the Seine, since some seagulls go as far as Paris.
I had an Acadian student who told me that his grandfather had a strange vocabulary: among other things, he used une lame instead of une vague and un chancre instead of un crabe. I told him that those words were not inventions or vagaries of his grandfather’s but the old traditional French words, which had been supplanted by the Norman ones (actually, lame, which normally means ‘blade’, is still used in French, for a breaker rather than a wave in the open sea).
DM: I didn’t know a cognate of Latin lacus was attested in Germanic at all
Is Scottish loch of Germanic or Celtic origin?
leek, right?
‘course.
laguz “body if water” […] I didn’t know a cognate of Latin lacus was attested in Germanic at all
Is Scottish loch of Germanic or Celtic origin?
ON Lögr m. <- *lagúz, e.g. the Norwegian rivername Lågen and hence the name of the town Larvik <- Lögarvík. B&L also list OS and OE lagu. I have argued that the original meaning of the word as a river name was “still water, cut-off meander”. One reason is that it’s unique among river names in being masculine. The word can also mean “extract from plants” in ON.
There may also be a feminine form with root stress *láho:- with meanings circling around “shallow water”: ON lá f. “water close to the beach, tidal plain”, No. dial. lå “reddish water in a bog”, MHG la: “pond, bog, swampy grassland”. B&L see a possible etymology for the name of the shorebird lo “Charadriidae” <- *ló:ho:n- f. “shorehen” or some such.
Anyway, the cognates of *lagúz all mean “still water”: OI loch n., OCS loky f. “pool, cistern”, Lat. lacu:s m. “lake, pool, basin”, Gr. lákkos m. “pool, cistern”, and the gender confusion might indicate origin as an adjective or a participle. The root *legh- “lie” would fit semantically but not phonologically, since the various attested forms seem to point to *lok(w)-
German Lauge “lye, alkalic solution”, and probably English lye as well, right? I suppose Laugenbrezeln are sacred to Oktoberfest initiates…
Yes, the etymology of laugr is “soaping” or some such, hence «seemingly prosaic». Bot the meaning “bath” and its use as name for a weekday are confined to NGmc. My idea of identification of Saturnus with saturare as a reason for laugardagr is independent of the esoteric ritual bathing speculations, by the way, but they could provide a possible context.
I must have misedited and lost both text and formatting here. I think I may have tried drawing arrows without coding the “lesser than”-signs properly.
ON Lögr m., e.g. the rivername Lågen and hence the town Larvik from Lögarvik.
B&L see a possible etymology for the name of the shorebird lo “Charadriidae” from ló:ho:n- “shorehen” or some such.
If I lost something more, I don’t remember it now.
[I’ve fixed your earlier comment but am leaving this one here as a warning to others: remember, kiddies, you can’t use < signs, you have to use & lt ;! -LH]
German Möwe: I don’t know how this is related to Da. måge, No. måse or måke, ON már, mási, *máki. It’s been suggested that this root is onomatopoetic (plus the masculine suffix -r, apparently). The suffixes -si and -ki were used for bynames. Under már my ON dictionary lists a regular genitive más and a form mávar with v. I think that’s the nominative plural.
Thanks, Hat, for reopening. It’s my usual offtopic stuff and only borderline linguistic, but for the sake of completeness:
When this thread was active I knew I’d just read some archaeological story about Roman kettles in Norway, but I couldn’t remember where or didn’t have time or whatever. But today I just fell upon it, even in English version. Roman metal pots were important prestige objects on the Norwegian west coast in the first centuries CE. Nw I think ketill could have been used in names in the sense “treasure, expensive gift”,
Marie-Lucie: Chancre is used in English for the characteristic painless sore of primary syphilitic infection, thus creating an etymological triplet: chancre, canker, cancer. The middle one is applied to plants only nowadays, but meant ‘cancer’ until the 18th century; Etymonline says it descends from OE cancer (borrowed directly from Latin) influenced by Old Norman cancre.
The middle one [canker] is applied to plants only nowadays
Alone. With sore, of course, it’s a common mouth ulcer.
I somehow didn’t respond to the chicken/soup issue back in 2011, so for the benefit of anyone reading it and wondering where the truth lies, MOCKBA is quite right:
So it appears that “ОЩИП” is a no-go.
It’s one of those desperate attempts to rationalize old idioms or texts, like the suggestion that in The Lay of Igor’s Campaign мыслію ‘in thought’ is an error for мысью ‘like a squirrel’ (see this 2017 post). Language in general is not rational or logical, and idioms still less.
Sorry, past JC — sky is [sg̥yˀ] in Danish, not [ʃy]. German seems to have Jus pronounced [ʃyː], and we borrowed it with “etymological hypercorrection”. (There is an established term for that, but I can never remember it).
Anyway, today it’s aspic. That is, dark (but clear) meat broth with so much bone gelatin in it that is solidifies on cooling. Never seen near cabbage, so the semantic match with щи is so-so. Current recipes uses leaf gelatin and ammoniated caramel instead of boiling it for a year and a day or whatever it takes.
But further back it meant any kind of meat juices from preparation, used to make sauce for instance.
Also, twice baked potatoes? The fad for twice-fried fries hadn’t hit in 2011, I’m sure. We do have the tvebak (calque of biscuit) which is a small (unsweetened) wheat bun, split and oven baked again until it’s crispy through and through and can be crumbled on your (hot) buttermilk soup. (Bigger than the (sweet) kammerjunker recently mentioned, though, that we put on the kærnemælkskoldskål).
-jus for the more liquid sauces is a standard term in the cafeteria I used to go to here in Berlin. I hadn’t encountered it in German before that.
@dm:
https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/dictionnaire/definition/jus/
(Cuisine) Liquide sapide et aqueux obtenu à partir d’un aliment solide.
https://www.dwds.de/wb/Saft
Flüssigkeit, die beim Braten aus dem Fleisch austritt und zu Soßen verwendet wird
So the French word is slightly more general (in its kitchen sense), but the replacement of Saft by Jus in the case of a roast is in principle unnecessary, unless the German Jus has been post-processed to make it more like a sauce.
Indeed I call most such things Saft (and the rest Sauce), but evidently northern usage is different.
Not Northern colloquial usage – that would also be Saft. Jus is a word used only on restaurant menus and in pretentious cookery books; a generation ago you’d see it only on menus of fancy restaurants, but it has spread since. Soon your local Würstchenbude will start using it…
The current word is kødsaft (as opposed to just saft, which is by default sweetened fruit juice (ius again) but not pulped fruit which in Danish is — juice). But further back cooks talked about Jus, pronounced /sky/, and a sauce based on meat juice is still skysovs.
Last time this was up, I asked if Latin iūs was /i̯uːs/ or /ii̯uːs/ — Vox Latina did not resolve the question where I could find it.
Also, root cognate with ost = ‘cheese’. This amazes me every time I look up the root, and then I manage to forget so I can be amazed again next time! And in enzyme…
root cognate with ost = ‘cheese’
And with уха and
юшка.
So fish instead of cabbage.
Anyway, my real reason for resurrecting this thread was to ask for elucidation on the sky – съти link. It turns out that Russian WP mentions the idea and quotes Vasmer who quotes Dahl who quotes de Courtenay, but from the GT version of the Vasmer article it looks like he accepts that *съкъ- might yield *сци- but the derivation of sky from jus sort of spoils the idea for him. (My Russian let me spot сок but no more).
Ah, no surprise, the cafeteria is pretty pretentious nomenclature-wise.
So how do pretentious Germans pronounce Jus now? I have no dates for German, but a Danish 1837 ‘Dictionary of Foreign Words’ says it was pronounced /sky/ already then even though spelled Jus, so the German/LG source was probably pronounced like Schü.
I have ever only seen it written, never heard it pronounced, but I‘d guess you‘d get anything between the French pronunciation and [ʃyː(s)].
Is /ʒ/ a German phoneme now? (Danish outside fancy restaurants has no truck with voicing, but I only have to close my eyes to hear a waiter exhorting the ʒy I’m going to get with my tiny serving of duck’s neck vel sim).
My experience with poorly-approximated aspic.
Me (2011): My idea of identification of Saturnus with saturare as a reason for laugardagr is independent of the esoteric ritual bathing speculations, by the way, but they could provide a possible context.
I had forgotten all about that, but I really like it.
Reportedly, some people have it as a loanword phoneme. Everyone else resorts to /ʃ/. Southerners who retain consonant length, such as yours truly, equate it with the (rare) short /ʃ/ which can be a lenis, though it’s still never voiced.
That said, jus remains foreign enough to me that I’d keep it French and use the fully voiced [ʒ] and the exolabially rounded short-but-closed [y] that I’ve both learned to articulate for French.
As DM says. French is usually the second foreign language after English taught in German schools, so there’s quite a number of people able to pronounce words they know to be French loans with something close to French pronunciation. Those who are not able or don’t know go with /ʃ/.
@Brett, I love the excuse the blogger gives for making the dish — sudden Angst over the pronunciation of gelatine as opposed to gelatin. (en.wikt says -TEEN not -TYNE, FWIW).
I forgot to mention earlier that the recipes I am finding for sky are mostly 100% fake: Stock cubes, sheet gelatin and kulør (ammonia caramel (E150c) and salt, as if the stock cubes didn’t have enough). The readymade stuff is much the same, except the stock didn’t make the detour over stock cubes.
Anyway, sky is mostly used for this thing nowadays — you can barely see the corner of the half slice of black rye bread, which is as it should be, and you’ll have to trust me that there’ll be both liver pâté and aspic under the heap of salt beef (which is obviously not the brisket corned beef that WP redirects ‘salt beef’ to — I think it’s the muscle called salmon cut in the UK and which is not a separate cut in the US).
@lars
What about
https://www.foodfanatic.dk/den-bedste-hjemmelavede-sylte
From the picture this has more “sky” than the salt beef????
@Lars Mathiesen: I was actually surprised by how much my wife seemed to be concerned about the pronunciation of “Gelatine.”
@Brett, I didn’t realize that it was your own experience, I just clicked on the link. I gather you are the person representing the feelings of negation and refusal in one of the pictures?
@PP, that is sylte. Originally made from a whole pig’s head boiled until the meat could be picked off easily, it naturally contained enough gelatinous substance from skin and bones to make an aspic between the pieces of meat — though the one in the picture was made with sheet gelatin. Sky doesn’t have pieces of anything in it, I think you strain it through a cloth if you make it from scratch. (That will not remove the fat, but it will collect on top).
Also, saltkød is made from what the French call Rond de Gîte De Bœuf — something an English-speaking butcher may not be able to produce. In Danish it’s lårtunge, literally ‘tongue of the thigh’ (and it’s much the same size and shape as a beef tongue, it even looks a bit like it when salted and sliced, but the taste and mouthfeel are very different).
@Lars Mathiesen: Yes, that horrified picture is of me, from back when I had a questionable beard.
@PP, on rereading I understood your question better. No, the saltkød and the sky are two separate ingredients, the latter is hidden by the former in that pic I linked. I didn’t link a picture of sky because I thought everybody knew how aspic looks. Here is a more frugal version where it’s easier to see what’s what.
That would be the semitendinosus muscle. In Italy one can find it as girello, and in Argentina as peceto.
In the UK, alas, butchers leave it together with the biceps femoris to make up what they call thick flank, an unwise choice since the textures are quite different.
Yes, this girello has exactly the texture I know from saltkød. It’s also called eye round in Australia, it seems.
It may well be what we in the US (at least here in Massachusetts) call “eye of the round,” but I’m not sure by looking at it.
Peceto is translated here as “eye of round.” (Also, milanesa de peceto is delicious.)
Milanesa de peceto sounds as something worth trying — is it supposed to be deep fried or pan fried? As far as I know, I’ve never had that cut of beef except as salted cold cuts, but I see that people here do it up as roast beef as well.
(The only common dishes I can think of here that contain breaded and fried meat are schnitzel and Cordon Bleu (veal, chicken or turkey). And flatfish).
Just past midnight and researching food. This may end badly.
@Lars Mathiesen: pan-fried is the traditional way to go. It’s essentially a variation on the basic formula of costoletta alla milanese, and a close cousin of schnitzel. (Me, I’m a pleb and prefer my milanesas made with bola de lomo, the rectus femoris muscle, even if they take a lot of tenderising.)
@Hat: have you ever tried peceto Villeroy, using béchamel sauce instead of egg to bind the coating? It used to be my grandmother’s go-to recipe for fancy occasions… until her generation learned about cholesterol and realised that beef coated in béchamel and subsequently pan-fried in butter might make for an unadvisable meal.
breaded and fried meat
Pankod? Pankød? Pankoed?
Panko (パン粉) er japansk panermel, der bruges til at give stegt mad så som tonkatsu et sprødt lag. Panko laves af brød bagt ved at føre elektrisk strøm gennem dejen,[1] hvilket giver brød uden skorper. Den har en mere sprød og luftig tekstur end de fleste europæiske brød og absorberer ikke olie og smør, når den steges, hvilket resulterer i et lysere lag.
https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panko
Panko (パン粉) is a variety of flaky bread crumb used in Japanese cuisine as a crunchy coating for fried foods, such as tonkatsu. Panko is made from bread baked by electrical current, which yields a bread without a crust, and then grinding the bread to create fine slivers of crumb.[1] It has a crisper, airier texture than most types of breading found in Western cuisine and resists absorbing oil or grease when fried,[citation needed] resulting in a lighter coating. Outside Japan, its use is becoming more popular in both Asian and non-Asian dishes. It is often used on seafood and is often available in Asian markets, speciality stores, and, increasingly, in many large supermarkets.
Panko is produced worldwide, particularly in Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_crumbs#Panko
Pan (パン) is obviously of Latin origin and means “bread” (as in Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie)
The word used to exist in English too, but became obsolete in 19th century.
There are several Side-dishes call’d Pains, i.e. Loaves, as being made of Bread stuff’d with different sorts of Farces; such are the Pains of Gammon, Partridge, Veal, and the Spanish Pain.
パン1 ﾛｰﾏ(pan)
【<Port pão】 1 bread.
pão
From Old Portuguese pan, from Latin pānem, accusative singular form of pānis
@sfr
“Became obsolete in 19th century.”
Here in Ireland you can buy a sliced pan (or an unsliced one if you prefer). I would be surprised if this is not the case in Britain.
I think it has different etymology – bread baked in a pan.
Pancake is not related to Latin panis either.
@Hat: have you ever tried peceto Villeroy, using béchamel sauce instead of egg to bind the coating? It used to be my grandmother’s go-to recipe for fancy occasions… until her generation learned about cholesterol and realised that beef coated in béchamel and subsequently pan-fried in butter might make for an unadvisable meal.
No, and it sounds delicious — screw cholesterol! I’d rather die full and happy…
@juha, I don’t know about Argentina (or Italy), but the stuff used for breading here is dried and grated tvebakker, i.e., (unsweetened) baking-powder-based wheat cake. Not much different from Panko, which we can also get at specialty prices, or from what English Wikipedia calls breadcrumbs.
(Or that is what it was originally, I guess the factory-made stuff doesn’t have to be twice-baked into specific shapes before being crushed).