I recently looked up the word ipecac (an emetic), which turns out to be short for ipecacuanha, and found that although the OED’s ancient (published 1900) entry gives this etymology:
< Portuguese ipecacuanha /ipekaˈkwanja/ , < Tupi-Guarani ipe-kaa-guéne.
Notes
According to Cavalcanti, cited by Skeat Trans. Philol. Soc. 1885, 91, the meaning of ipe-kaa-guene is ‘low or creeping plant causing vomit’. The word is said to be a descriptive appellation applied to several medicinal plants, the proper name of the Cephaëlis, which produces the ipecacuanha of commerce, being poaya.
…the currently accepted one is much more interesting; Wiktionary:
From Brazilian Portuguese ipecacuanha, from Old Tupi ypekakûãîa, from ypeka (“duck”) + akûãîa (“penis”).
Also, my wife and I watched Sentimental Value last night; it’s a terrific movie, and all the acting is good, but Renate Reinsve is spectacularly good and should get all the prizes. My question, of course, is about her surname; this site says “The name is derived from the Old Norse elements reinn, meaning reindeer, and sve, which can be associated with to be or to dwell,” but there doesn’t appear to be an Old Norse sve, and I’m wondering if anybody has any better information.
How about vé instead? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/v%C3%A9#Old_Norse
It appears to come from the reconstructed proto-Germanic wīhą = sanctuary or sacred place and also yields Óðinsvé which becomes Odense in modern Danish.
Thanks a lot, Hat. Thanks to you and the internet I know more than I did yesterday about the evolution of duck anti-rape anatomy, and saw the cheerful title of a video, “Duck with Prolapsed, Gangrenous Penis Gets a Trim,” which I did not watch.
Anyway, the source of that etymology is Navarro’s excellent Dicionário tupi antigo: língua indígena clássica do Brasil, which also quotes Padre João Daniel’s 1757 Tesouro descoberto no rio Amazonas: “É ũa raiz delgada, cheia de nós, e do feitio do genital dos patos, e daqui vem o chamarem-lhe os naturaes pecacuenha, que quer dizer na sua língua genital do pato.”
How about vé instead?
It would make sense, but then where does the -s- come from? As far as I know, Norse doesn’t have an s-connector like German.
Skeat’s quote is here, as part of an article, “Words of Brazilian Origin”, which would be handy if it were more reliable. He quotes Cavalcanti’s 1883 The Brasilian language and its agglutination, which even if you don’t know anything about the language, looks handwavy and suspect.
I may be busy these days, but I still recognize a question for me when I hear it.
Reinsve is transparently a Norwegian farm name. Unfortunately, it’s not in Rygh and it’s not searchable as a toponym at Norgeskart.no. There could be several explanations for that. The one I prefer is that it’s a “delingsnavn”, a name coined when a larger entity was split up. In this case it would seem to have seized to exist after the family adopted the farmname as a surname in the late 19th/early 20th century.
The head of the compound would be the overarching farmname, which could be either Ve “sanctuary” or Sve “farm established by slash-and-burn”. I’ve not seen the latter in indefinite form, so I’ll go for Ve. There are a handful of those across the country, but since I know she was born and raised near Drammen in Eastern Norway, the most likely is probably Ve in Ringerike, now completely built over by houses.
The modifier rein could be either 1. ON hreinn m. “reindeer” (but likely used as a male name), or 2 ON rein f. “edge of a field, demarcation line”. With Sve, the modifier might perhaps even be ON hrein adj.f. “clean”, but I’ve never seen that used in a farmname.
Edit: Modern Scandinavian certainly has a connecting -s, a descendant of the ON m.sing. genitive -s.
@Y: Your new knowledge may give you a more accurate picture of feathered glory.
I may be busy these days, but I still recognize a question for me when I hear it.
It certainly was for you, and I’m glad you responded to the call.
Modern Scandinavian certainly has a connecting -s, a descendant of the ON m.sing. genitive -s.
Ah, I had assumed that it would only occur if there was a genitive -s in the picture. I have learned many things today!
Well. I think that’s a matter of definition. In this case it’s ether “the Ve of (belonging to) Rein” or “the Ve of (by) the borderline or edge”. Is the latter a genitive or a connector?
Edit: Note also delingsnavn “name formed by division” in my previous comment.
It all is clear to me now!
German Rain m., presumably so spelled just to (further) distinguish it from rein adj. pred./adv. “very clean*, pure”.
* Slogan (for a washing powder, I think): Nicht nur sauber, sondern rein!
Other possibilities:
Rein “edge” is also a farmname in its own right. There are a few names of the type [Farm A](s)[Farm B] around, usually with a neighbouring farm as the first element. One might suggest Reinsve “the part of Ve belonging to Rein“. One of the Rein farms is even Reinskloster in Trøndelag, a convent turned manor with a large estate, but I don’t think there are any Ve farms in its district.
Ve could possibly also be from ON viðr “wood”. That doesn’t seem to be the case in any of the uncompounded farmnames, but I know of a couple of compounds.
But both types would be likely to have survived as toponyms to this day.
A synonym for ipecacuanha is poaia. Ferreira’s Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa says it’s from Tupi pu’aya, which I did not find in Navarro’s dictionary.
By the way, the Norwegian name of Sentimental Value is Affeksjonsverdi, where verdi is ‘value’ and related, I presume, to German Wert; where’s the -i from?
@languagehat: Danish has it too.
for those who haven’t delved into the duck-anatomy yet, isabella rossellini has you covered.
I had seen some of the series, but until now not the duck one. They are unspeakably wonderful.
To be precise, ypeka is one particular species. Navarro quotes Frei Cristóvão de Lisboa, Historia dos animaes e árvores do Maranhão, “É preto pelas costas e pardo pela barriga e as asas pintadas de branco e alguns são todos pretos […]” (Modernized spelling). That is, it has a black back and brown belly, with wings speckled white; some are all black. Lisboa provides a drawing too, here, p. 333 (f. 81 of the original).
Hat: verdi is ‘value’ and related, I presume, to German Wert; where’s the -i from?
From Low German werdīe says my dictionarīe. How LG got it, it dorsn’t say. For all I know, it could be the French ending borrowed and misapplied in a specilazed accountancy term. Not so specialized anymore, of course. As the movie title shows, it’s used for metaphorical values as well. But we still have the inherited noun verd in the compound menneskeverd “human dignity, value as a human being”.
–
Looking more on the map and also on census rolls, I think Ve in Ringerike is unlikely. Already in 1890 most of the farm had been taken over by an institution for the elderly poor. There’s a Ve in Flå in Hallingdal as well, which would be a more likely place for Rein as a malw name. It does have a number of subsidiary farms, but none of them were listed as Reinsve in the census. There’s a Gudbrands-Rukke nearby, though, following the suggested formula.
Usually when I can’t find a name in the reference works, I can find the farm on the map and make an assessment of the different options, but not so wth Reinsve.
The only citation for werdie in the 19th century Schiller/Lübben Mittelniederdeutsches Wörterbuch uses the word for the mathematical value of a fraction: “Wo men die weerdye van jeder broeke (idt sy in muente, mate oder gewichte) vinden sall. Friese, Rekenkunst. S. 45.“.
@trond, ulr
North Frisian seems like a good vector:
https://friesisch.net/
When you put in “Wert”, you see NF forms like wardii, werdii or werti. I can’t say whether these were themselves influenced by Danish or Low German.
Of course unconnected, but this came up in search for Reinsve:
Icelandic hreinn sveinn “male virgin”
“One may legally name one’s child Hreinn Sveinn in Iceland – and therefore this name often serves as a cruel but comical example of double entendre in naming traditions.” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hreinn_sveinn
Høhø.
@Y: The description of the ypeka sounds like the Southern Pochard, Netta erythrophthalma, but that doesn’t look like the drawing.
And neither the description nor the drawing resembles the Giant Wood-Rail, Aramides ypecaha. Jobling’s only comment on the etymology of that epithet is that it’s the bird’s Guaraní name.
D’Abbeville says it’s very pretty. Lisbon also mentions it has nests of “buracos de pau” — tree hollows, I suppose — raising 9–10 chicks at a time. Both are emphatic about how good it tastes. How about Muscovy ducks? Those occur in Maranhão, where the description is from. They nest in tree hollows, and the picture fits with the big feet and the knob on the beak.
Confirmed, in Stradelli’s 1929 dictionary of Nheengatu, the modern descendant of Old Tupi (p. 474): “Ipéca — Pato bravo. Carina muscata. Muito commum em todo o Amazonas, tanto em estado selvagem como domesticado, com a curiosidade de apresentar neste ultimo estado uma variedade immensa de plumagens, que, a não sabe-lo, poderia fazer acreditar na existencia de raças diversas.”
Is it 1929 or 1928?
Good catch! The title page says it’s the second issue of 1928 of the Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro, printed in 1929. It appears as 1929 in the bibliographies. Do the standard style manuals say anything?
(Also, I don’t understand “Tomo 104 — Vol. 158”.)
In my field, and in taxonomy, it would be cited as 1929; one journal, maybe a few more, would go for “1929 (for 1928)”.
Volume and issue, or something like that?
It also says 2°. It looks like independent running numbering for volumes and issues, with an irregular number of issues per volume.
Backing up to hat’s original characterization of ipecac, while “emetic” does not generally seem to be labeled as an archaism in dictionaries, the google books ngram viewer confirmed my vague impression that it’s dramatically less common than in the old days. After a lengthy period of decline things stabilized about a half-century ago, but back during the days of Peak Emetic in the 1840’s it was used about 15x more frequently than that current stable rate.
I may well have first encountered the word when I first read (age 16 or 17?) Judge Woolsey’s famous take on Joyce: “whilst in many places the effect of _Ulysses_ on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.”
It’s possible that the ratio of use of the noun to use of the adjective has also shifted over time along with the overall decrease in usage of the string-of-letters, but assessing that would require a deeper dig that AFAIK the ngram viewer hasn’t automated.
So what do you call something that causes vomiting?
Well, one possibility is that we simply have much less occasion to write about inducing vomiting than our forefathers did in the 1840’s? I’m not sure when I myself last needed to deploy a lexeme for that purpose. Medicos generally upgraded long ago from emetics to “pumping the stomach” of a patient with something down there that needed to be gotten out, which wikipedia advises is called “gastric lavage” if you want to sound jargonish.
“Emetic” is perfectly usual for vomiting-inducing drugs in medicine. Indeed, we actually used ipecac itself to induce vomiting when I was a casualty officer shortly after the Congress of Vienna. I believe it is disfavoured nowadays, with more controlled methods of emptying the stomach being preferred. But I am glad to say that it is a very long time since I had to be well-informed on such matters.
To build on David E.’s point, when a particular once-common thing falls out of common use because it is “disfavoured” or overtaken by changes in technology or social/cultural practice, the word that refers to it may come to feel a bit archaic just because its referent feels a bit archaic even if it remains the standard word to use when it is necessary to refer to that referent.
Dialectologists used to draw isoglosses based on different names for various sorts of things you would have around a farm that had different words for them in different regions, but in many cases these are now things that people commonly have no word for rather than a region-specific word.
Sine nomine.
I’ve been given something by medics to induce vomiting — pretty sure it was ipecac — but that was forty years ago.
I believe emetics are counterindicated in particular when one has swallowed caustic materials. You don’t want them injuring the esophagus and the mouth again on the way up.
THE EMETIC NATURE OF DANISH here in 2013 (with comments by J.W. Brewer, but not on the word “emetic”).
@Y: Thanks for figuring out that it’s a Muscovy Duck (whatever the etymology of that “Muscovy” is).
The genus name, Cairina, sounds vaguely Amazonian, but no — it’s a “Cairo duck”.
I see that much of this discussion is in the WAry entry for Tupi ypeka, with more quotes. Inexplicably, the gloss ‘Muscovy duck’ was removed from an early version of the entry.
Picking up the onomastic thread:
There was once a farm called Rein(s)sve in Verdal, Trøndelag, as recorded in the 1891 census. See numbers 44 and 45.
Number 43, Rein, is explained in Rygh by the word Trond Engen gave earlier as “edge of a field.” The entry ends by wondering (if entries do wonder) whether the name could have been chosen with a peculiarly Trøndersk meaning in mind, roughly “a slope that’s none too steep.”
Indefinite ‹-sve› shows up in some family names taken from farms in Trøndelag, particularly up north. The definite forms would have been neuter, which as far as I know is also (nearly?) unique to that part of the country.
Sve “farm established by slash-and-burn”
Sve! Very interesting! Old Norse sviða. I was surprised to learn from the OED that present-day standard English swidden is not the direct continuation of a Middle English word borrowed from Old Norse, but rather a technical term of anthropology and agronomy borrowed from English dialects in the 19th century.
@Coo: Thanks! That settles it. The sve established under Rein.
I hate giving up, but couldn’t get useful results out of the nation-wide census search function and didn’t have the time to go through all parishes with Rein, Sve, or Ve farms. Did you have more luck, or do you have local knowledge?
And very good to know that I’m not alone!
@Trond Engen: I had three things going for me: luck, your having already eliminated options I might have tried, and that one piece of knowledge (luckily retained) that there are -sve names in northern Trøndelag which correspond to the definite form -sveet.
No connections up there. I’ve never even gone nordenfjells, though like every other person in the world right now I’d like to. What Norwegian I have I learned as a private expression of warm feelings for a grandmother, who if I’m honest didn’t speak much of it herself. And I don’t need a lot of a language before I begin nosing into naming practices. It’s an amateur’s mania; there’s no degree behind it.
Anyway, when turning to the archives I did so with a light heart, as I had only two leads I was planning to follow, corresponding to two farms called Rein in what was once Nord-Trøndelag. Casting such a small net is an easy, even a calming, thing to do. And luckily it worked! Not that the farm in Verdal must be the source of the name we know. The satisfying thing is that there definitely was one.
I enjoyed reading your comments earlier, partly because you have a more solid grounding than I do so there was much for me to appreciate, and partly because it’s nice to run into someone who shares what for me is a private interest satisfied largely among the records of the dead: suddenly it’s living! I hope you’ll understand what I mean.
I think all of us here at the Hattery understand that pleasure.
In hindsight the parsing Rein[s]-sve looks obvious. I made too much out of the elided linking s.
Goes to show that my grounding isn’t as solid as it may appear when my suggestions stand uncontested. Good to know that there’s somebody following when I get going on Norwegian toponymic surnames and settlement history.
Hat (OP):
Also, my wife and I watched Sentimental Value last night; it’s a terrific movie, and all the acting is good, but Renate Reinsve is spectacularly good and should get all the prizes.
I’m reviving this thread to say that my wife and I just came home after catching the very last screening of Affeksjonsverdi at our local cinema.
I expected Renate Reinsve to be good, but bloody hell, every actor was shockingly good. Every line, every change of face, every twitch of an eye was perfect lived life, from the major roles to the passers-by and the child actors. And I say that as someone who is often having creeps over the unidiomatic lines and theatrical acting in Norwegian films and series.
That’s very good to hear — thanks for reporting back!
Accepted e.g. by dictionaries of Portuguese and by Merriam-Webster, which had this as far back as the 11th Collegiate edition in 2003. But, IMHO, it’s unsatisfactory to just say “duck penis” — why would a plant be called that? It doesn’t make sense without knowing that (as Y found out) ducks have coiled penises, and (I guess) the root appears to be coiled too. Some r/etymology commenters were baffled and guessed “maybe M-W fell for a prank”. (Actually, I’d guess MW compromised on the explanation because space is tight in print.)
Ducks were domesticated in some places in pre-Columbian South America, maybe the Tupi knew this anatomical detail from breeding them?
The Wiktionary contributor who added this etymology is (from their history) serious and knowledgeable about Old Tupi, but I wish they’d cited references.
maybe the Tupi knew this anatomical detail from breeding them?
My mother’s father had a house next to a lake, and he fed the wild mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) every morning. At some point, mallard sexual behavior and male mallard anatomy must have been explained to me as a young child, but I can’t remember ever not knowing it. One can observe the long, knobbly, corkscrew-like penis extended from the male mallard during the frequent attempts at forced copulation. It is hard not to notice, since one’s attention is constantly drawn by the commotion of forced copulation attempts or a mated pair trying to fend off a gang of aggressive males. Domesticated A. platyrhynchos behavior is the same in the farmyard. The behavior of Cairina moschata is apparently similar both in both the wild and in the farmyard, though I have never observed it. C. moschata has been apparently been domesticated in South America for two millennia. I suspect any peoples keeping domesticated C. moschata—or simply living close enough to large bodies of fresh water and wild populations of C. moschata—will be familiar with the strange appearance of a duck penis. And a simple Google image search on “ipecac roots” will show the resemblance of the root to a duck penis.
To add to the citation from Padre João Daniel (1757) Tesouro descoberto no máximo rio Amazonas adduced by Y in the thread above… Antônio Geraldo da Cunha (1978) Dicionário histórico das palavras portuguesas de origem tupi also accepts this etymology for Portuguese ipecacuanha and provides extensive citations of early attestations of the word. The earliest spelling that Cunha cites is jgpecacoãya, from Fernão Cardim, Do clima e terra do Brasil, which was apparently written around 1584, but published later. This spelling is eminently consistent with the etymology from Tupi ‘duck penis’. I suppose jg / ig is an attempt to write the vowel /ɨ/ in this instance. Among the other citatations in Cunha’s work, I also noted the following from João Curvo Semedo (1716) Memorial de varios simplices, in which in the folk etymological influence from Portuguese pica and cão seems to have been at work.
Perhaps Curvo Semedo encountered the etymology from ‘duck penis’ but misremembered it?
I don’t see why one should suspect this etymology as ‘duck penis’ of being a prank. Consider the common plant Arum maculatum, still often called cuckoopint in English, and formerly vit de prêtre and vit de chien in French (vit ‘penis’, obsolete outside of contrepèteries), and vitelou has been collected from a Picard variety. Or consider the widespread mushroom species Mutinus caninus, called bite de chien or bite de loup in French (sources on the web say dog stinkhorn in English, but I wonder if this simply a bowderlization of something like a colloquial *dog dick). I feel as if I have encountered something similar (the root of a plant being called ‘dick of X’) in languages of the Americas, but maybe I am thinking of this. (I am also wondering if Peruvian Spanish huacrapona ‘the palm Iriartea deltoidea’ is simply Quechua waqra ‘horn’ + pona ‘the palm Iriartea deltoidea’, and what the waqra is doing in there specifically.)
I wonder if LH readers can think of similar examples.
Not quite what you’re looking for, but there are the orchids (including the “Male Orchid”, Orchis masculus)
Common Stinkhorn, Phallus impudicus. This one is quite graphic. On the other hand, I fail to detect the resemblance in the Death Cap, Amanita phalloides.
Here’s the buttercup Ranunculus testiculatus, also called Ceratocephala testiculata. Note the fruit.
Greek ὄρχις ‘testicle; orchid’ is a great example, exactly parallel! Thank you for that example.
I was thinking of ὄρχις myself in writing my previous commen but got lost in trying to find an explanation of why the modern Arabic varieties صحلب ṣaḥlab and سحلب saḥlab ‘salep’ have a ḥ in them. This is a problem I can’t let go of…
The same metaphor is also in Syriac ܓܘܼܢܣܲܩ gunsaq ‘orchis, salep orchid’, from a Middle Persian *gund (ī) sag ‘testicle of the dog’.
I wonder what other examples LH readers can come up with.