I’m about halfway through Bryusov’s novel Огненный ангел (The Fiery Angel) and am enjoying it despite my irritation with its overindulgence in the details of 16th-century magickal philosophy. In chapter 6 there’s a scene where our hero Ruprecht, hopelessly in love with the nutty Renata (who herself is hopelessly in love with Count Heinrich von Otterheim, who she thinks is the fiery angel Madiel in human form), goes to Bonn to consult with the man who is supposed to the age’s great expert on the occult, Cornelius Agrippa, and in Agrippa’s house he meets several boisterous young students, one of whom, Hans, is so meek and girlish “говорит ‘спутники’ вместо ‘панталоны'” [he says sputniki ‘fellow travelers, satellites’ instead of pantalony ‘pants’]. Bryusov’s footnote (he assiduously footnoted his own novel) says “‘Trabanter wie jene Jungfrau, die nicht gerne das Bruch nent, sagt’ — выражение XVI века [a 16th-century expression].”
I have to admit I was familiar with Trabant only as the name of a famously terrible East German car, but I looked it up and discovered it means ‘satellite’ or ‘companion,’ just like Russian спутник (and in fact I learn from that Wikipedia article that “The car’s name was inspired by the Soviet Sputnik satellite”). But where is it from? Wiktionary says “From Middle High German drabant (‘Hussite foot soldier’), of unclear origin”; Lutz Mackensen says the MHG word is borrowed from Czech drabant with the same meaning, though folk etymology connects it with the verb traben; the OED (entry not fully updated since 1913) says “< German trabant a life-guard, an armed attendant, a satellite (also in Astron.), in Italian trabante, French traban, Bohemian drabanti; of Turkish (originally Persian) origin: see drabant n.” and at drabant (“A halberdier; spec. a soldier of the body-guard of the kings of Sweden”) says “< Swedish drabant attendant, satellite: in German trabant, Italian trabante, French traban, draban, Bohemian drabanti, Magyar darabant, Romanian doroban, < Turkish (originally Persian) darbān porter, guard.” All of which leaves me confused and wondering whether any progress has been made in etymologizing this Wanderwort.
I almost forgot to mention that when I looked up Trabant in my huge Harper-Collins Unabridged, I was half amused and half appalled to find the following pair of entries:
Trabant m (a) (Astron) satellite. (b) (Hist) bodyguard; (fig) satellite. (c) usu pl. (dated inf) kiddie-wink (inf).
Trabbi m -s, -s (inf) East German car
They leave the “car” sense out of the main entry (while including “kiddie-wink,” whatever the fuck that is) and then for Trabbi (isn’t it usually Trabi?) they just say “East German car” without mentioning what it’s short for! Tsk.
Update. See also this 2013 XIX век post, which I totally forgot I’d commented on, giving the same Persian-Turkish etymology. Tsk.
On another blog seven years ago someone you might know left the following comment:
—
languagehat
October 15, 2013 9:59 am
German Drabant apparently goes back (via Turkish) to Persian darbān ‘gatekeeper, porter; guard’ (from darb ‘door’).
—
https://xixvek.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/words-new-to-me-драбант/
Judging by the etymological dictionaries of Pfeifer (1995) and Kluge/Seebold (2011), no real progress has been made. Kluge sees it as a Czech loanword, while Pfeifer adds that “von anderen Slawisten wird tschech. poln. drabant als Entlehnung aus dem Dt. (bei ungeklärter Herkunft) aufgefaßt”. Both refuse to speculate any further.
On another blog seven years ago someone you might know left the following comment:
Ha! My memory continues to deteriorate…
ulr: Thanks! I guess we’ll never know.
“kiddie-wink” is a cutesy-wootsy word British used by doting maiden aunts to describe small children. “Do the kiddie-winks want their afternoon biccies?” It may be completely antique by now.
Thanks! The OED has the following citations:
“Delicious milky~boo for the kiddy-winks” makes me want to fwow up.
And, of course, we have to throw in the town of Derbent
When I was a wee, wee lad interested in stars and space, my father (b. 1936, geodetic surveyor) taught me that the earth is a planet and the moon, circulating the earth, a drabant. Man-made objects circulating the earth were satellites, and sometimes we could see them move across the sky. When my teacher a few years later didn’t know the word drabant and corrected me, I thought he was wrong and influenced by American terminology. I grew to accept that satellite was the term of the trade, but right up until now I have believed that drabant was an antiquated latinate word.
Hans Kunglig Majestäts drabanter could have used an exercise bicycle. They don’t look all that scary but perhaps they were really sarcastic.
Trond, En måne, naturlig satellit eller drabant är en himlakropp som kretsar kring en planet eller en asteroid i ett solsystem. (Swiki).
Terra to Luna: “Did not I dance with you as trabant once?”
Luna: “Did not I dance with you as trabant once?”
T: “I know you did.”
L: “How needless was it then to ask the question!”
T: “What time of day?”
L: “The hour that fools should ask.”
Far from being terrible, the Trabant is an engineering marvel – East Germany started with nothing – no plans, no resources, no specialized knowledge. It was through sheer ingenuity they were able to make the car at all – they didn’t have enough steel, so they figured out a way of turning cotton waste from the Soviet Union into a fibreglass-like material called Duroplast that Trabant bodies were made out of. The entire car is like a masterclass on doing more with less – using a two-stroke engine with only 5 moving parts, relying on gravity to feed the fuel to the engine instead of a pump. And all of this at a price an ordinary East German can afford. Now that’s real ingenuity.
In the Spy Museum in Washington DC there is (or was, when I went some years ago) a Trabant that’s cut in half, from front to back, to show how a smallish to medium sized person could wrap him or herself inside the structure of car (partly around the engine, if I remember right) and thus perhaps be smuggled into West Germany. Apparently some people made it out that way. It looked frightening.
:East Germany started with nothing – no plans, no resources, no specialized knowledge
Maybe true concerning the resources, but not concerning plans and specialised knowledge. The factory producing it was part of Audi before the war and had a tradition of producing cars going back to 1909.
Me: I thought he was wrong and influenced by American terminology
… especially in light of the very common drabantby “satellite town; suburb”.
AJP: Trond, En måne, naturlig satellit eller drabant är en himlakropp som kretsar kring en planet eller en asteroid i ett solsystem. (Swiki).
Yes. Similarly Norwegian Bokmål WP on Naturlig satellitt (an ugly term):
Store Norske Leksikon on Drabant:
As I meant to say, I came to accept that the term was antiquated (even if I still think it’s a term we need, ref. the terminological mess above, and the ugly biplanet and the even uglier naturlig satellitt). What I didn’t realize until now is that it’s not Latinate.
Yes; apparently somebody wanted to spell out the fact that the a is short (which it is because Trabant looks Latinate enough to have final stress).
Zeit zum Uhrkaufen “time to buy a watch”.
Trabantenstadt, an extremely rare word outside the title of one Asterix volume.
Me neither.
“Kiddie-winks” is something my mum would have said. She was born in the UK in 1942. And it would have been a conscious allusion to an older time, a Wodehousey touch.
For me Trabant (as a name of a car) was always some blend of charabanc and tarantass. And now I see neither of them have anything to do with the word in question.
“Kiddie-winks” would have been a conscious allusion to an older time
Right. I never heard anyone use it or kiddie-winky except with irony.
Trabi at a price an ordinary East German can afford
Audi at a price an ordinary West German can afford.
I was stunned by your Harper-Collins Unabridged excerpt until I realised that it’s a bilingual dictionary.
What a coincidence: I’ve just begun reading Petr Čornej’s magnificent new biography of Jan Žižka (which, incidentally, is full of interesting linguistic tidbits, such as an entire chapter on the Hussite commander’s last name) and the word ‘drabant’ of course features in the Hussite anthem (modern rendition. The verses are (2:41 in the linked video):
Vy pakosti a drabanti,
na duše pomněte,
pro lakomstvie a lúpeže
životóv netraťte
Ye X and Y
remember your souls,
for the sake of avarice and theft
do not lose (your) lives
I’ve alway taken X and Y to refer to camp followers, especially due to the reference to avarice and theft (and later loot), plus the entire song basically addresses all manner of folk present in a medieval army. This is why the translation in the wiki article above – “you beggars and wrongdoers” – never made sense to me. Even Holub’s and Lyer’s normally reliable etymological dictionary of Czech didn’t help, their entry for ‘drabant’ reads “a bodyguard”, and Šimek’s dictionary of Old Czech has “a footsoldier with a halberd”, which is somewhat anachronistic; more importantly, neither fits the context. But “a hanger on” (which is what a satellite is, in a way), makes perfect sense.
“pakost”, fyi, is a more straightforward word, meaning “calamity, bad luck” and by extensions “ne’er-do-well”, “rogue”, “brigand”.
which, incidentally, is full of interesting linguistic tidbits, such as an entire chapter on the Hussite commander’s last name
So what’s the executive summary?
D.O.: There are many villages and towns in the south Rhodopes, (and some in Bosnia), currently divided between the territitory Greece took after the first world war from Bulgaria and the current borders of Bulgaria called “Дервент”.
https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82 claims that it originally meant “keepers of the mountain passes” and that it derives from Persian دربند (darband) via Ottoman Turkish, “closed gate”. And I remeber “дервент” used in 19th century Bulgarian as “door guard” or maybe “bouncer”?
The origin and meaning of the name Žižka – executive summary:
Option 1: žižka/žužka = one-eyed
Pro: attested as far back as the 16th century with this meaning, e.g. court records refer to someone as “Žižka, i.e. the one-eyed”.
Con: not attested in the 14th/15th century.
Option 2: derived from the name Zikmund = Sigismund
Pro: Charles IV had the remains of St. Sigismund of Burgundy transferred to Bohemia in 1365 and a local cult sprung around them.
Con: Jan Žižka was born ca. 1364; Žižka as a hypocoristic form of Zikmund is not attested (the stereotypical ones that turned to surnames are Zich, Ziga, Zigáček).
Option 3: žižka is derived from one of the words beginning with ž- which have something to do with fire and light (žnout, žíhat, žár)
Pro: Čornej specifically cites the Slovak terms rel=”nofollow”> “žiža” = “light, small fire, something smouldering or burning” and “žižka” = “candle” *
Con: What would be the motivation? Čornej mentions two theories: a) Žižka lost his eye in/by means of a fire; there is nothing to support it. b) Žižka means “firestarter, arsonist”; this one is easily disproven by the fact that Žižka himself uses this name in official documents and he wouldn’t do that if it had any sort of negative connotation. Čornej gives the example of two other Hussite commanders – Jan Hvězda of Vícemilice known as Jan Bzdinka (= little fart) and Jan Řitka (= small butt) of Bezdědice, neither of whom signed any official document with their colorful surnames.
Option 4: Žižka refers to some sort of eye disorder, most likely “cross-eyed”.
Pro: Cf. modern Polish “zez”, Old Polish “zyz” (cf. “zyzooki”), whence “zyzka, zyszka”.
Con: A bit farfetched.
*Fun fact: “žiža” is now used almost exclusively in baby talk. “žižka” is also used for “vagina”.
Thanks! Lots of piquant material there; I especially like Jan Bzdinka and Jan Řitka.
One of the Imperial and Royal guard companies was called the k.k. Trabantenleibgarde. It was founded in 1519 by the emperor Maximilian.
A picture of their colourful uniform can be seen on the german wikipedia.
V, surely for Bosnia you meant Macedonia? Excuse me, FYROM or whatever.
Roger C: I did mean Bosnia, and I think all of “Macedonia”, “FYROM” and “North macedonia” are all equally puerelle and/or agressively (and in some cases, maliciously) ignorant. You needn’t have been so fussy about it, but thank you for the thought.
I was refering to the fact that the Wikipedia article I quoted claims that there is a village called “Дервент” in Bosnia also. I did not know that. I makes sense, because the southern Rhodope mountains are places where Mulsim Bulgarians traditionally live, and Bosnia is a place where, traditionally, people who are Muslim and are speakers non-Slovenian southwest slavic also do.
Also I don’t mean to imply that non-Slovenian southwest slavic is not diverse. I just don’t know what else to call it without offending anyone.
and I think all of “Macedonia”, “FYROM” and “North macedonia” are all equally puerelle and/or agressively (and in some cases, maliciously) ignorant
Well, you do need some way to refer to it, and North Macedonia (for the last year or so, anyway) has the advantage of being the official name of the country.
I think I’ve seen some people using “Paeonia” (the name of an ancient kingdom, the northern neighbor of Macedonia until conquered by them in the mid-4th century BC, which roughly corresponded to the FYROM in terms of territory), though I don’t think it ever caught up except as a joke.
Around here, the name Serbo-Croatian is most common (according to Dr. Google), with Serbo-Croat and BCSM tied for second place. I think FYLOSC (Former Yugoslav Language Of Serbo-Croatian) is a purely Languagehat joke.
I have also said that if the U.S. had achieved independence in the 21C instead of the 18C, its international name would be the Formerly British Republic in the Middle of North America, pronounced “fibber-mna”.
I prefer the Formerly British Republic in the Middle of the Great Expanse of Earth, pronounced “fibber-mcgee.”
So, etymologically “darband” is just a “door bind”?
While it makes sense to avoid some terms shanghaied by unpleasant ideologues (“Aryan” is thoroughly skunked), I don’t think anyone outside Greece needs to worry about “Paeonia.” Greek neo-Nazis do not, thankfully, dominate the earth, and nobody outside Greece knows or cares about their peculiar forms of discourse.
Greek neo-Nazis really disappointed me by abandoning planned worship of Twelve Olympians.
Around here, the name Serbo-Croatian is most common (according to Dr. Google), with Serbo-Croat and BCSM tied for second place. I think FYLOSC (Former Yugoslav Language Of Serbo-Croatian) is a purely Languagehat joke.
Well, a purely LH joke (it did, apparently, originate here, which I didn’t recall) that is occasionally spread elsewhere (particularly on Language Log) by LH regulars.
(For the record, an unspecified Google search finds five results [plus about a dozen assorted scannos], only one of which is on LH, though one of the other four is a dead link.)
That said, FYLOSC-or-whatever is South-Western Slavic, while the official language of North Macedonia (whatever we’re supposed to call that one) is South-Eastern Slavic (i.e. closely related to Bulgarian); I don’t recall the details offhand, but IIRC all the “South Slavic innovations” common to the two branches turned out to be shared retentions, so SW Slavic and SE Slavic might actually be primary divisions.
(…Modulo Slovene, anyway. I’m not sure what’s going on with Slovene.)
Great Expanse of Earth, pronounced “fibber-mcgee.”
I like the acronym too, but the Americas are actually only the Second Greatest Expanse. In one of Asimov’s essays, he picks up on McKinder’s Law (“He who controls the Heartland [Eastern Europe and European Russia] controls the World Island; he who controls the World Island controls the world”) and talked of the World Island and the New World Island.
I’m not sure what’s going on with Slovene.
Well, there is a continuum from Standard Croatian to Kaikavian to Slovene, but throughout the last century it has been treated as being under a different Ausbau despite the comparative lack of Abstand. Apparently Croats find Slovene maddeningly pseudo-familiar (they can pick up everything except the most important words), whereas Slovenes have a lot of exposure to Croatian and understand it better as a result.
It’s very diverse, and at least a third of that diversity is located in Austria and currently dying out (in favor not only of local German dialects, but also of Standard Slovene) at least as fast as it can be documented at current funding levels.
I wasn’t trying to be a puke, just make a little fun. I’m very glad to know that “FYROM” is no longer a necessary word in diplomatic (in two senses) circles.
V said: “I just don’t know what else to call it without offending anyone”.
If you use the name that the locals use, you can’t go wrong. Of course that means learning and respecting the local usage, rather than relying on an outdated label like Serbo-Croatian or Illyrian or some such thing.
If I was referring to Croatian usage, I’d call it Croatian, if referring to Montenegrin usage – Montenegrin, and so on.
If it’s a chakavian example, the reference should always be to Croatian.
If it’s something that applies across multiple dialects / languages, then it’s easy enough to say eg. “In Croatian, and Bosnian such-and-such is called so-and-so….” Here is an example from a related group of languages: “In English and German a ‘Finger’ is located on a ‘Hand'”
V says: “people who are Muslim and are speakers non-Slovenian southwest Slavic”
You mean Bosniaks?
If you use the name that the locals use, you can’t go wrong.
It would be nice if that were the case, but it’s not. In the first place, locals often use different names and hate each other’s versions. In the second place, non-locals often hate local names. It is literally impossible not to offend anyone; all you can do is decide who you’re willing to offend.
You mean Bosniaks?
Not necessarily. This definition is still broad enough to include more ethnic groups.
Eg, according to the 2011 Croatian census, 9,647 Muslims in Croatia declared themselves as ethnic Croats.
If you use the name that the locals use, you can’t go wrong.
That would mean calling Wiveliscombe “Wivvy”.
I’d rather die.
Paeonia (and yes, I know the history of the place I live in), is sort problematic for the very same reason. Modern Greek Neo-nazis are but pale sdows of the megali idea crowd, but best not empower them. We know of the Paeoni from ancient Greek sources after all, so in their minds that equates to “that’s (modern) Greek”.
SFReader: “So, etymologically “darband” is just a “door bind”?”
The similarity occurred to me just after I posted that comment. Sorry for the brevity, commenting from my tablet.
Also I don’t mean to imply that non-Slovenian southwest slavic is not diverse. I just don’t know what else to call it without offending anyone.
South-Southwest Slavic?
(Seriously tempted to call it “Kavian” as a compromise between the three main fractions. Though admittedly this would exclude Torlakian.)
January First-of-May: Torlakian is southeast Slavic. The most marginal between southeast and southwest.
…Huh, so it is. I didn’t know that. No problem with excluding it then.
Nashjazikian would be another possibility, even if it does look rather Armenian.
Far from being terrible, the Trabant is an engineering marvel – East Germany started with nothing – no plans, no resources, no specialized knowledge.
I too boggled slightly at the assertion that East Germany in the late 1950s was a nation with no heritage of automotive engineering.
The entire car is like a masterclass on doing more with less – using a two-stroke engine with only 5 moving parts, relying on gravity to feed the fuel to the engine instead of a pump.
The Trabant was not “a masterclass on doing more with less” – its manufacture was grotesquely wasteful in resources and its engine was horrifically polluting. Build quality was appalling and reliability, consequently, very poor. It really takes some considerable effort to get a factory full of Germans to produce such a shitty car. It was kind of the “Cats” of its day; how do you get that much talent and that many resources, and end up with something that bad?
And all of this at a price an ordinary East German can afford. Now that’s real ingenuity.
The Trabant had at least a ten-year waiting list. If you wanted to buy a second-hand one, it would cost you six months’ wages. The official price for a new one was half that – I mean, I guess three months’ wages is affordable, more or less? But not much good if they won’t let you buy one because there aren’t enough.
The Mini came out around the same time as the Trabant. It was far better in every possible respect.
At the time when Trabant was introduced, West Germany was making this marvel of consumer minimalism
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UNTKZrSb8S4/sddefault.jpg
Berlin’s new airport was supposed to open in 2012. And Stuttgart’s new train station…
Those are really impressive delays. Die deutsche Wirtschaft schafft Alles!
“The German economy shafts everyone”?
Well. Accomplishes, but your version is apposite. (SKOD verb (some kind of derived) from the strong homonym schaffen/schup = ‘create’. Da skabe (weak), E shape/shope).
Anybody who talks about a two-stroke engine as an engineering marvel does not know what they are talking about.
Shaft is Schacht as in Hjalmar, who might be the father or protecting spirit of the German economy.
“A Schacht is a hole, but a Schaft is a pole.” The latter is the native word; Schacht must come from Dutch or Low German where the change /ft/ > /xt/ is regular, cf. Stiftung vs. Du stichting.
Who’s the Reichsbank president
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks? (Schacht)
You’re damn right.
See also the Martha Washington Monument, a hole in the ground 555 feet deep.
“according to the 2011 Croatian census, 9,647 Muslims in Croatia declared themselves as ethnic Croats.”
I’m not entirely sure what that has to do with a “village called “Dervent” in Bosnia”.
I suspect V was referring to a city called Derventa in Bosnia.
According to the 1991 census, the population of the city was 31% Muslim, 26% Serb, 24% Croat and 15% Yugoslav. After the fall of Derventa to the Serbian paramilitary forces in 1992, the Muslim and Croat population was ethnically cleansed from the area. Following the 1995 Dayton agreement, Derventa was allocated to the Serbian Republic and remains overwhelmingly Serb (83% at the 2013 census).
The original name of the city is Gornja Ukrina, named after the river Ukrina. Some time in the 18th century, the Turkish name Derventa was recorded in use.
The etymology given by the brilliant Škaljić is:
– Turkish dervent, derbent, from Persian derbend “pass, defile, gorge; small border fortification located in such a place”, composed of der “door, gate” and bend the present of besten “to bind, to tie”.
Derventa is located near the border of Bosnia & Heercegovina and Croatia, and in the 18th century was near the border of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires.
“according to the 2011 Croatian census, 9,647 Muslims in Croatia declared themselves as ethnic Croats.”
I’m not entirely sure what that has to do with a “village called “Dervent” in Bosnia”.
Nothing, I think. Rather it’s meant to show that not all Muslims in Bosnia are Bosniaks, as implied by your earlier question “You mean Bosniaks?”
“not all Muslims in Bosnia are Bosniaks”
Even if that was the case – still not clear what it has to do with the 9647 muslims in Croatia or for that matter with a “village called Dervent in Bosnia.”
I was just pointing out that V’s definition “people who are Muslim and are speakers non-Slovenian southwest Slavic” which you took to mean Bosniaks is broad enough to include other ethnic groups, for example Muslim ethnic Croats.
Late to the party here, but nevertheless… The Swedish verb “drabba” goes back all the way to old Norse. The meaning has changed over the centuries, but the original meaning was “to kill” or “to strike down”. Nowadays it can also mean “to afflict”. If you “drabba” together with someone, you’re quarrelling. The noun “drabbning” means “battle”.
The old Norse epic poems were often called “[name]-drapa”. It’s unclear why, could be because it retells some violent event or it could refer to the beat of the poem (viking poets were possibly accompanied by drums back in the day, like some very violent beatniks).
The legal term for manslaughter is still “dråp”, which has the same origin.
Adding the suffix “-ant” to the root word would make it “someone who strikes down”. The first time it shows up in writing is in 1526, in a notice that one of the king’s Drabants (then spelled “Draffvant”) killed someone with a halberd. This would have been the King’s guard, similar to the Beefeaters in the tower of London.
The meaning of Drabant changes over the years, it becomes a figurative term, and takes on the meanings “compatriot”, “faithful ally” or “zealous follower”. So it’s easy to see how the astronomy term came about.
So for my money it’s an old Norse word, and the Persian “Derwent” is a coincident.
It’s very common for names of special troops to stick around in other languages. I see the discussion above regarding former Yugoslavia, and I’m reminded that the colorful scarves of the Croats became the Cravattes in France.
The attested ON drabba v. meant “be careless”. I don’t think that’s relevant here.
Update: I forgot to add that FWIW ordbokene,no (the web dictionaries of the Norw. Language Council) now says that drabant is from Czech through Low German,
ON had drepa = ‘kill’ from which Danish dræbe and drabelig = ‘formidable’. A doublet is the verb træffe from NHG treffen. I don’t think the Latin -ant ending is relevant here, the present participles in Danish and Swedish are dræbende and drabbande (morphologically cognate to Latin -ant).
The Danish dictionaries agree that drabant is from LG dravant but do not claim more than “uncertain” for the further origin; one of them tells us to compare with HG trabant and It travante, but that’s not an origin.
Each time I see this “trabant” I mechanically substract Berber feminine and find that the rest is not in accordance with Berber morphology and phonotactics.
Lars M.: ON had drepa = ‘kill’ from which Danish dræbe and drabelig = ‘formidable’. A doublet is the verb træffe from NHG treffen.
Yes, ON drepa < PGmc. *drepan- : pret.sg. *drap- “hit”. The only etymology B&L can offer is a back-formation from a lexicalised participle of the “drip” ~ “drop” verb, There are parallels, so the explanation isn’t quite as shaky as it might seem. Sw. and Norw. drabbe “hit, etc.” < LGer. also belongs here.
What I meant is that ON drabba “be careless” has a different origin. Following B&L, we have ON drav n. “sediment in brewing” < PGmc. *draba- n. “refuse, sediment” and drafli m. < *drablan- PGmc “food made from curd and milk”. Different forms of the root also take metaphorical meanings in the general area of “muddled, dull”. Following me, “be careless” is an easy extension from “muddle” or “be muddled”.
But now that I think of it: The root is also found in Greek and BSl. with similar concrete meanings, going back to PIE *dhr-ebh- “(let) thicken”. “Thickening” isn’t a bad metaphor for the gathering of followers around a rich or powerful leader.
@ this thread back circa March 2020 : I think I’ve seen some people using “Paeonia” (the name of an ancient kingdom, the northern neighbor of Macedonia…
For the Triune Kingdom of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania cf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enquiries_of_Doctor_Eszterhazy
and related works…
Well, those people are Just Wrong. The Triune Kingdom has been mentioned here a number of times, first in 2002.
Huh. de.wiktionary on Trabant:
“probably from Old Czech drabant “king’s/personal guardsman”, Late Middle High German drabant “foot soldier or pikeman of the Hussites”, astronomical meaning since the early 18th century”
Stress on the last syllable, so it sounds a lot more Latinate than it is.
d/t confusions happen between German dialects, many of which lost the distinction in some or all environments in or soon after Late MHG times. See also tausend “1000”.
Me: ON drabba [<] PIE *dhr-ebh- “(let) thicken”
It occurs to me that the geminate needs an explanation. B&L resort to “expressive bb” in similar forms like stabbe, but that’s not very satisfying. Tomorrow…
@Trond
A possible Norw. parallel is krabbe for which Wiktionary says:
From Old Norse krabbi, from Proto-Germanic *krabbô, from Proto-Indo-European *grobʰ-.
Yes. Bjorvand & Lindeman (in my translation):
How about krebs/kräfta = ‘crayfish’?
There we go: it’s a *n-stem, so we’re looking at PIE *grobʰ-nó- in parts of the paradigm, and that gives *-pp- in PGmc by Kluge’s law. The alternation *b-*pp coexisted with *p-*pp and *f-*pp in other words, as well as *l-*ll and the like, so it was, in this word, reduced to pure length, in this case *b-*bb. This happened in enough words to create the phoneme *bb.
Some words, like “knave”, are attested with *b, *p, *bb and *pp, mostly but not entirely in different Germanic languages.
Nobody has yet explained what’s supposed to be so emotional about crabs – other than GIANT ENEMY CRAB I suppose.
Yes, a Kluge mess seems likely for the *dʰre-bʰ- set as well, maybe with drabba “be careless” < an inchoative *dʰro-bʰn- “become thickened”. The metaphorical connection between state of mind and properties of fluids is everywhere, as indeed in Eng. thick.
The metaphorical connection between state of mind and properties of fluids is everywhere, as indeed in Eng. thick.
Blöd is thicker than water. There’s also a connection with properties of clothing: das Hemd ist näher als der Rock.
It’s funny because it’s true!
(From times when Rock meant “overcoat”. Nowadays it means “skirt”, probably explaining why the idiom seems to have died out.)
@David Marjanović: Not knowing the older sense of Rock, I found the expression confusing, but if it meant an overcoat that’s much more straightforward.
The old meaning is still preserved in Schlafrock, Morgenrock “night gown, dressing gown”.
True, though is Morgenrock still in anyone’s active vocabulary?
Morgenrock, Morgenrock,
noch aktiv auf meinem Blog!
Tangentially, I am reminded of Dürer’s Selbsbildnis im Pelzrock, which I got to see when I was in Munich several years ago. It’s stunning.
Morgenrock, Morgenrock,
noch aktiv auf meinem Blog!
Somehow Germans usually manage not to devoice the final consonant in that one word “blog”, so the rhyme is slightly defective (though the sentiment is admirable). After 50 years of admonishing them to cut that crap with English words, I see first fruit.
Somehow Germans usually manage not to devoice the final consonant in that one word “blog”
OK, that’s just ridiculous.
What is ridiculous about it ? I should have written “Germans in IT” since it is their speech patterns to which i am subjected.
If you devoice final stops, you devoice final stops. You won’t catch Russians, for instance, making exceptions.
I’ll be interested to see what David Marjanović has to say about this.
If you devoice final stops, you devoice final stops. You won’t catch Russians, for instance, making exceptions
Morris Halle reckoned that this proved that phonemes don’t exist. (I forget the details. On purpose. Once I knew them, but did it make me happy? Did it make me good?)
“Blog” is an English word whose English pronunciation is being successfully imitated by some German speakers. Furrin pronunciation can be learned. Principled denial of that possibility is futile in the face of facs.
On that señalyruido radio station I’ve seen listening to for years, the main presenter even manages not to say estandar when citing a paper in something like The International Journal of Standards, The effort is audible, but “standard” comes out.
“Blog” is an English word whose English pronunciation is being successfully imitated by some German speakers. Furrin pronunciation can be learned.
So in fact it’s not a German thing, and my little ditty works perfectly well except for some suspiciously cosmopolitan IT guys.
It’s New Wave. Your ditty is only slightly uncosmopolitan. I did admire the rustic sentiment.
Schlafrock reminded me (just via its spelling) that I did know somewhere in the back of my mind that German Rock is probably related to English frock—which can also mean a dress or an overcoat. Historically, while frock was used for a fair number of garments (notably including the monk’s habit), it is now largely restricted to two specific senses: a dress for an underaged girl (although this can sometimes be playfully extended to similarly styled dresses for adult women), and the specific double-breasted frock coat.
The initial f in the English word comes from its having been mediated through French froc, and it’s at this point that the etymology is apparently a bit unclear. The French form was probably borrowed from Germanic rock or hrock, but apparently some linguists believe that it is unrelated—derived from Latin floccus.
Norw. slåbrok “bathrobe, dressing gown”. I always etymologized that as slå “hit” but also “wrap, cover” + brok “trousers (arch.)”. But it’s pronounced as if written -brokk or even slobbrokk. And a gown is not a pair of trousers, wraparound or otherwise.
Here’s a coastal linguist (Bremen, Hamburg) asserting the homophony with Block on his own blog.
From my own experience I can’t say much. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Blog pronounced like Block, but I haven’t heard the word often from Germans. I’ve also heard plenty of people carry Auslautverhärtung* over into English, but of course this is something that people can learn to recognize and avoid even if not many do, and many of those that do probably still don’t bother when importing a word into German.
I’ve also noticed Zelensky devoicing word-final /v/ when he speaks Ukrainian. Native speakers seem to go in the other direction – towards a diphthong-forming [ʊ̯] or even total deletion.
I don’t germanize Blog further than [b̥lɔˑg̊]** (with a laminal [l]), so it remains quite far from Block [b̥lɔkː]***, much too far for a rhyme to work, but Up South we don’t have Auslautverhärtung in the first place. I actually have to actively remember to do it to the ends of Russian words, or I end up with a Serbian (or Ukrainian or French or English) accent… it doesn’t help that the schoolbook was made for Germany and simply never mentioned the issue, so I only found out years later.
* Final fortition. It applies to the ends of all syllables, not just the ends of words****, and it applies e.g. to Upper Saxon which lacks voiced plosives (Inderior German Gonsonant Weagening).
** (variable) vowel length because the word would be too short otherwise
*** consonant length because we’re just that conservative
**** Examples I’ve actually heard: Sydney [ˈzɪtniː], Simbabwe [zɪmˈbap͡vɘ] with perfect timing of the voice onset in [p͡v].
I can’t see how that would make sense. Loanword phonemes exist rather obviously.
laminal [l]
That seems really difficult. Not something I’d do unless I’m trying to get rid of some really sticky candy in my mouth.
Not [lʲ]?
Laminal as in “generically non-English”, with the tongue held flat. English, Dutch and Very Northern German use an apical one instead (and likewise for /n d t/, plus, in Dutch, /s/), with the tongue curled up a bit (just not so far as to create actual retroflex consonants – though close enough that an India/Pakistan accent uses retroflexes for /l n t d/, as opposed to laminal [t d] for /θ ð/).
slåbrok — identical in Danish, though unless you are shouting stuff syllable by syllable over the phone, the difference between slå-brok and slåb-rok is extremely subtle. (But ODS, edited 1942, gives a primary pronunciation with long first vowel and stød — which will audibly force the /b/ to the next syllable — though I never heard that myself).
Also, redeem. By etymological phallacy all peevers must know about and abide by Latin red-imō innit. (I was looking up irredentist. Turns out they won’t fix your teeth either).
Heh. This Blog discussion gives me licence to plug this slightly dated joke (I’ve heard he still keeps them there. But that’s for another time).
Also, contemplaiting Hemd which is closer then der Rock I looked up a Russian saying about one own’s shirt, which on its face is illogical (closer than what?), but that’s the way of Folk Wisdom. German was more faithful to the original. (“Tunica propior pallio est” from Plautus’ Three-penny opera, if you’ve got as much Latin as I and do not want to google).
“Native speakers seem to go in the other direction – towards a diphthong-forming [ʊ̯] or even total deletion.”
In Russian dialects with approximants there are situations
“voiced approximants”,
“[v] before vowels, voiced approximants elsewhere”,
“devoiced approximant are possible”
and also different strategies for dealing with foreign words with /f/: some dialects with [v] borrowed [f], others use хв, хвV/xC xϕ..
Sadly, maps are either “Russian” or “Ukrainian” or “Belorussian” or “Polish”…, and no one cares when an isogloss is orthogonal to the political boundary:(
“Morris Halle reckoned that this proved that phonemes don’t exist. ” – If it proves that phonemes don’t exist, then it does and if it does not prove that phonemes don’t exist then it does not, but it is physically impossible to voice an obstruent in this position.
My freint says that I am the only speaker around him who can sometimes voice dee (sorry, I can’t use bracketet transcrptions in [..], /…/ even ⟨…⟩ ) in “вряд ли”. Which he says is very ott and I must be a superhuman. But I am not sure we were not just discussink вряд ли ant наврядли (we were 17). You’t think that вряд ли is a wort but… Though, he beleives that it shoult be devoicet in наврядли too. What to expect from a guy who thinks that episkop is spellet as ebiskop*?
*I just realiset that peculiarity of my freind’s orphographical beliefs MUST have to do with the fact that his grandmother spellet бидон as бетон. She was born in Germany, a daughter of a German lady ant one of those savache mountain Jews from Caucasus (his other ancestors are civiliseset Jews but I think Yiddish does not do that).
I can’t see how that would make sense
Nor me; however, I am being slightly mischievous: Halle was talking about eliminating an intermediate sort of entity in aid of overall theoretical simplicity. In its day, his “Hallean Syllogism” was regarded as a shining specimen of theoretical brilliance.
The mindset behind it is the Sound Pattern of English Chomsky-and-Halle stuff.
My freint
Saw what you did there …
Thanks!
Most of Yiddish doesn’t, but some dialects do have some sort of final fortition (I don’t know which kind exactly).
True, though is Morgenrock still in anyone’s active vocabulary?
Mine, if I count 🙂 It was the usual word I grew up with in my family. When talking to people outside of my family, I may use Morgenmantel, but it’s not something that comes up frequently in conversations outside of household situations.
Googling it gives a reasonable number of hits; the first ones I get that aren’t dictionary entries or crossword clues are offers by clothing shops, so the word seems to be in commercial use.
Ah, thanks.
Blog may be a neologism, but Rock ‘rock and roll etc.’ is very much not, and yet it retains its English /r/ as distinct from the German one in the native Rock we are talking about here. My mother pronounced Chance with a French-style nasal vowel; I don’t know if the non-silent -e is a spelling pronunciation or a survival, which would make it Very Old Indeed.
I have heard pronunciations of Rock (‘n Roll) both with English-style and German-style “r”; the latter mostly from older and / or less educated speakers. For Chance, there is a wide range of pronunciations, from as in French to [ʃaŋzə] and even [ʃant͡sə]. Your mother’s seems near the “French” end, and pronouncing that with a schwa is quite frequent.
I have heard pronunciations of Rock (‘n Roll) both with English-style and German-style “r”; the latter more from older and / or less educated speakers. But if the word is used in compounds like Rockmusik, a German style “r” is used predominantly (like here in Rocknacht at 1:10).
For Chance, there is a wide range of pronunciations, from as in French to [ʃaŋzə] and even [ʃant͡sə]. Your mother’s seems near the “French” end, and pronouncing that with a schwa is quite frequent.
I don’t pronounce the -e, not in words like Sauce either (which is why I don’t spell it Soße as many people do), but the true reason for this is probably homegrown: most Standard German final -e are missing from my dialect, so I’m used to the concept of dropping it.
I also get the nasal vowel right because my dialect happens to have it…
From the OP…
So the cognate of breeches survived into the 16th century and was a neuter singular!
From Dec. 27th:
I thought they’re all quite literally about how [name] was murdered? (With lots of backstory and consequences, of course, perhaps over several generations, but still.)
“The Death of Mary Queen of Scots”
Nice to see them reusing the “I’m not dead!” bit to good effect.
Le Morte Darthur
I should probably have said “slain”, though.
As we say, the difference between sauce and sovs (the nativized spelling and pronunciation) is that sovs will stick to potatoes. (This is a good thing). The Swedes spell it sås.
@David Marjanović: Had I opted to post a serious thought, rather than a Monty Python joke, it would have been to wonder whether the form of the name of le morte Darthur represented a continuous northwestern European literary tradition, connected back to the sagas, of titles describing the deaths of works’ protagonists; or whether it was an archaizing affectation when it began to be applied to full-length works about the life of King Arthur. So far as I know, the earliest similar title belongs to the last part of the Lancelot-Grail cycle, where it makes sense, since it tells of battles and events from the last period of Arthur’s life. That’s from thirteenth-century France, still rather removed in time from the heydey of Germanic epics. Later authors and redactors, most famously Mallory of course, applied the name to tales that covered much or all of Arthur’s life, and I have often wondered why.
Turkish dervent, derbent, from Persian derbend “pass, defile, gorge; small border fortification located in such a place”
Notably as in Kızderbent ‘Maiden Pass’, home of the Trakatroukides ‘bang-bangers’ whose language was “a heavily Turkicised Bulgarian (possibly with Greek and Armenian elements)”