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I showed my wife a striking photo of hop pickers at work; neither of us had had any idea that hops grew vertically and had to be picked that way. Then (of course) I got onto the word hops, which the OED told me had been around since the 15th century (c1440 “Hoppe, sede for beyre..hummulus, secundum extraneos,” Promptorium Parvulorum 245/2) and was inherited from Germanic:

In 15th cent. hoppe, < Middle Dutch hoppe, Dutch hop = late Old High German hopfo (Middle High German hopfe, German hopfen); medieval Latin hupa (for *huppa); ulterior origin obscure.

The Wikipedia article mentioned that hops are dried in an oast house, and we agreed that oast is a funny-sounding word; it goes back to Old English (OE “Siccatorium, cyln uel ast,” Antwerp Glossary 239) and has a more ancient etymology:

Cognate with Middle Dutch ast, est, eest (Dutch eest), Middle Low German eist, probably < a suffixed form (verbal adjective) of the same Indo-European base as ad n.¹; compare classical Latin aestās summer, aestus heat, boiling, bubbling, tide, and also the first element of the Germanic personal name Aistomodius, lit. ‘fiery mind’ (2nd. cent.). Compare east n.²

That ad¹ is “A pyre, spec. a funeral pyre. Also: fire as a means of burning bodies” and only lasted until the 13th century:

Cognate with Old Frisian ēd peat (for fuel), Old Saxon ēd pyre, Old High German eit hearth, pyre (Middle High German eit) < the same Indo-European base as (with various different stem formations) ancient Greek αἶθος heat, classical Latin aedēs hearth, house (see edifice n.), Early Irish áed fire.

And east² is an English regional (south-western) equivalent of oast.

Joel of Far Outliers wrote me as follows:

The huge memorial for the Lahaina, Maui, wildfire yesterday included a massive “paddle-out”! Are you familiar with the term? Surfer Today has an explanation.

The article, by Luís MP, begins:

The paddle-out is a spiritual symbol of surf culture. It’s a traditional Hawaiian tribute to the life and legacy of people who passed away.

In most cases, the paddle-out is a floating memorial held in the ocean, a few yards from the shore, where surfers and other water sports participants honor someone they cherished. Paddlers often carry flowers and Hawaiian leis on top of their boards and in their teeth to the place where they will celebrate someone’s life. As they arrive at the selected location, surfers join hands, form a human circle, say a few words, chant, and splash the water.

What I liked about the article is that it gently but firmly debunks the idea that it has to do with “pre-historical Polynesian rituals”:

Most historians believe the paddle-out was born in the Hawaiian islands, but only in the 20th century when the Waikiki beach boys introduced it in Oahu. The earliest reports of a paddle-out date back to the 1920s.

Legendary surfing pioneer Wally Froiseth once said he participated in his first paddle-out in 1926 when he was just a six-year-old kid. “I don’t know of any place that did it before Waikiki,” Froiseth told the New York Times in 2010.

Well done, Luís MP! As Joel points out, it’s not in the OED yet, but Wiktionary has an entry for it.

Jonathon Green is a longtime favorite here at LH (e.g., 2014, 2018); now he has posted a cri de coeur called The End Is Nigh (and we can all be grateful I didn’t use that as my post title):

I am 76 and change. I cannot continue for ever. But it is my wish that my lexicon should. OK, not forever, a dangerous promise, but I would certainly prefer that the ‘book’ should not vanish alongside its creator. GDoS offers 738 synonyms for ‘death’, ‘dead’ and ‘die’ and I see no reason to stop things there. Up till now continuation has been simple: I want another dictionary? that the last edition is now out of date and should now merely prefigure its replacement? then sit down at the screen for yet another day or many more, and make one. But without a sitter? Here comes the problem. […]

Off the top of my head the only major dictionary (multi-volume, working on ‘historical principles’, which means usage examples or citations) that one might term ‘future proofed’ is Oxford’s OED. (Smaller ones, aimed at school/college presumably are more likely to appear, even in print). And we know from its histories, whether that of Katharine Murray or more recently Peter Gilliver, the extent to which every day of its existence has been a struggle against those who are allegedly its supporters and financiers. Bean-counters will count, whether Master of Balliol or otherwise. Publishers, however grand, are ‘trade’ and trade seeks, depends on profit. They may not tell you so as the flattery dances across that initiatory lunch table but thus it is. And if ‘they’ must be dragged like a genuinely unwilling Speaker when it comes to the national treasure that is the OED, am I really to expect a rush to support the unveiling of yet another synonym for gherkin-jerking?

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A MetaFilter post reminded me of the odd regional term hotdish, which refers to what most Americans would call a casserole; according to this CBS News explainer:

“To try to put a boundary around hotdish is a losing battle,” said Tracey Deustch [sic; s/b Deutsch], a professor of food history at the University of Minnesota. She pointed out that virtually all hotdishes are casseroles, but probably not all casseroles are hotdishes.

Casseroles became popular in the United States during the 1920. They were made possible by the advent of the self-regulating oven, according to Megan Elias, a professor of gastronomy at Boston University. This was also around the time canned goods were becoming more accessible. […] Casseroles could be used to stretch leftover meat, which was especially important during the Great Depression and World War II. Tater tots, though, were not a staple of casseroles — or hotdish — until much later. Ore-Ida came up with the tater tot in the 1950s as a way to sell potato scraps. According to Deutsch, the product did not sell well at first, so Ore-Ida decided to market it as toppings for casserole.

Hotdish is common terminology in western Wisconsin and Minnesota, while casserole is the preferred name everywhere else in the country. The story behind that is still a mystery, at least according to Deutsch, Elias and Ann Burckhardt, author of Hot Dish Heaven. What is known, though, is that the term “hotdish” first appeared in a 1930 Mankato cookbook, published by Grace Lutheran Ladies Aid. “What’s clearer is that the dish has become a symbol of Minnesotan identity,” [Deutsch] said. “That is exactly why there are so many debates over what a hotdish can be.”

The OED created an entry last year:
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Muireann Maguire’s Facebook post introduced me to a new word: “Extremely pleased we made it to this beautiful place, the biggest tombolo (not to be confused with a tombola, which tends to involve the Women’s Institute) in the UK.” I was familiar with tombola but not tombolo, which that Wikipedia article defines as “a sandy or shingle isthmus,” adding:

A tombolo, from the Italian tombolo, meaning ‘pillow’ or ‘cushion’, and sometimes translated incorrectly as ayre (an ayre is a shingle beach of any kind), is a deposition landform by which an island becomes attached to the mainland by a narrow piece of land such as a spit or bar.

All well and good, but I wanted to know more, so I went to the OED, where I found the following etymology:

< Italian tombolo sand dune, tombolo (1763) < classical Latin tumulus tumulus n., with folk-etymological alteration after Italian tomba tomb n.

But I was surprised by the pronunciation they gave, which is:

British English /tɒmˈbəʊləʊ/ tom-BOH-loh
U.S. English /tɑmˈboʊloʊ/ tahm-BOH-loh

Surely, thought I, the Italian word has the stress on the first syllable, and this turned out to be the case (Wiktionary). So I turned to AHD, which gives the pronunciation as (tŏm′bə-lō′), with the stress on the first syllable. Merriam-Webster says the same; neither gives a penultimate stress even as an alternate. So the OED is completely wrong about U.S. English!

Furthermore, for tombola the OED says:

British English /tɒmˈbəʊlə/ tom-BOH-luh
U.S. English /tɑmˈboʊlə/ tahm-BOH-luh
      /ˈtɑmbələ/ TAHM-buh-luh

But again Merriam-Webster gives only initial stress for the US (“ˈtām-bə-lə British usually täm-ˈbō-lə”), with no alternate penultimate stress (AHD, oddly, doesn’t have the word). So here too the OED is misleading about US usage. (For what it’s worth, I myself use initial stress for tombola, and though I’d never seen tombolo my instinct was the same there.)

A couple of decades ago, commenter Godfrey mentioned Familiar Dialogues (1586), by Jacques Bellot, “a treatise written to teach Frenchmen to pronounce English,” and now I present Simon Roper’s video (11:43) about it. It has various points of interest: there are almost no occurrences of “thou” (was it seen as rural and quaint? grandfatherly? religious?); there are very few contractions (but a striking form is “God be wy,” now even further condensed to “goodbye”); and pronouns can be omitted in now-surprising ways (“I will pay no more for [sc. them]”). Roper even provides citations to works of linguistics onscreen. It’s well worth your while — thanks, Ransom!

By the way, speaking of pronouns — I’ve noticed in French movies I’ve watched recently that couples who are in love, live together, and have sex use vous rather than tu. In Portrait de la jeune fille en feu [Portrait of a Lady on Fire] you could say “Well, it was prerevolutionary France, usage must have been different,” but La maman et la putain [The Mother and the Whore] is set in 1972 Paris, and yet Alexandre and his lover Marie se vouvoient. Anybody know what’s up with that? They’re not haughty aristocrats like Boëldieu in La Grande Illusion, who says “Je dis vous à ma mère et vous à ma femme”!

Oren Cohen Roman’s “When Yiddish Was Written in Latin Letters” (Journal of Jewish Languages, 30 Apr 2024) covers a lot of bases; the abstract reads:

Although Yiddish was traditionally written in Hebrew letters, texts in this language were also recorded using Latin characters in various circumstances, times, and places. These texts offer valuable information regarding pronunciation traditions and shed light on the processes of cultural history and sociolinguistics that acted as catalysts to their preparation. Various studies have discussed this phenomenon, yet they usually focus on one specific reason for using the Latin alphabet, such as ideological Romanization or linguistic adequacy. The following article offers for the first time a descriptive survey of the entire corpus, from the Early Modern Era to the present day. Paying close attention to the orthography used and the variety recorded, this article discerns within the studied corpus distinct categories reflecting the religious, linguistic, and ideological backgrounds of the texts’ authors and intended readers as well as technical factors pertaining to print. It also highlights the crucial role of the Hebrew alphabet in Yiddish culture.

A particularly interesting section is 2.2 “Jews Literate Only (or Primarily) in Latin Letters,” which begins:

The second category of Yiddish transliterations also originated in the German-speaking realm, beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century. The standardization of the German language and the general shift to the new standard, coupled with the maskilic struggle for emancipation and their campaign against Yiddish, served as the frame for the collapse of western Yiddish. Ashkenazi Jews in Western and Central Europe shifted to using German and other European languages, such as Dutch and French (Shmeruk 1978:147–175). Trends of linguistic assimilation also occurred in Eastern Europe but were never complete, and prior to the Holocaust Yiddish (written in Hebrew characters) was still the mother tongue and daily vernacular used by millions of Jews there.

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I am aware of the currently popular slang meaning of brat, but on its own it wouldn’t have inspired a post. However, Len Pennie (see this LH post from last year) has a charming Instagram video in which she produces a Scots equivalent: clipmalabor /ˈklipməˌlabəɾ/ “A senseless, silly talker, applied to a thoughtless country wench”; “a girl who does as little work as possible.” She thinks this should be revived as a positive description of “my girlies,” and I can’t disagree — it’s a great word. Thanks, Sven!

Stephen Bruce has been a reader and sometime commenter at the Hattery for over a decade; a couple of years ago he wrote me that my post on Veltman’s novel Странник [The Wanderer] inspired him to do a translation, and he now informs me that it is scheduled for publication next year from Northwestern University Press. As I told him, I am wildly excited about the news, and I will of course promote the translation vigorously when it appears. He had some questions he thought the assembled Hattery might be able to help with, and I reproduce them below:

1. Chapter XXX: “держитесь за перилы! не глядите вниз, иначе голова закружится, и вы, избави бог, отправитесь к источнику сил, как говорит г. Сочинитель Метамеханики.”

I assume this is a self-reference, but I may have missed something. My note: Metamechanics: apparently an invention of the author, who in the short story “Erotida” says metamechanics is concerned with “the laws of spiritual movements in nature.”

2. Chapter XLVII: “Как тиринтиец, я лопнул со смеха, когда увидел, как две водовозные клячи…”

I translate this as “Tirynthian” and at one point came up with these two possibilities: “Possibly Hercules, from Tiryns; but perhaps instead one of the Tarentines who laughed at the dress of the Roman ambassadors.”

3. Chapter XCI: “по границе бывшей Турецкой империи, или все равно, по бывшей границе Турецкой империи. Перестановка слов ничего не значит; впрочем, Кромвель и запятой воспользовался…”

Perhaps I am missing something in the reference to Cromwell. Here’s my current note: “Cromwell. . .: possibly alluding to a story in Geoffrey le Baker’s chronicles (c. 1356) about a message sent to the keepers of the castle where King Edward II was imprisoned: “Edwardum occidere nolite timere bonum est.” Depending on where the punctuation is placed, it can mean either “Do not fear to kill Edward—it is good” or “Do not kill Edward—it is good to fear.” Oliver Cromwell was involved in the execution of a different king, Charles I, in 1649.”

4. Chapter XCVIII: “Туда, как в Керамин… мудрецы мои! сбираетесь вы судить и рядить, пить и плясать.”

Akutin [the not-always-reliable annotator of the Soviet edition] has Keram, but the first edition has Keramin. My note: “perhaps Ceramicus, a district of northwest Athens, or Abel-keramim or “plain of the vineyards,” ancient town in what is now Jordan (mentioned in Judges 11:33).” But am I missing anything?

5. Chapter CCXXII: “Но натуральный термин..”

I assume that the “lunar disease” here is menstruation (?), but I don’t know what “natural term” the medic is referring to.

The full context of the line in 5 (the Wanderer is discussing a squadron of Amazons with a doctor):
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We’ve discussed Wittgenstein a fair amount over the years (I quoted him as early as 2002), but I couldn’t resist posting A.W. Moore’s LRB review (1 August 2024; archived) of three new English translations of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — it’s too full of good things to resist. He starts off with half a dozen paragraphs providing a basic summary of what the book deals with:

Part of the aim of the book is to indicate what it is about the world that makes it possible for us to represent it, in thought or in language. Wittgenstein is led to a vision of crystalline purity. The world is the totality of facts. Facts are determined by states of affairs. States of affairs, each of which is independent of every other, are configurations of objects. These objects would have existed however the facts had been. If the facts had been different, it would have been because the objects had been configured differently, not because there had been different objects. Representation itself consists of facts. Thus a thought or a statement is a fact, determined by a configuration of ‘signs’. In the most elementary case the signs stand for objects, and the fact that they are configured in the way they are represents that the corresponding objects are configured in the same way. The thought or statement in question thereby serves as a ‘picture’ of the corresponding fact. It is true if the objects are configured in that way, and it is false if they are not. In a less elementary case, for example in the case of a conjunction of two statements, truth or falsity is determined by the truth or falsity of its constituents: a conjunction of two statements is true if both its constituents are true, false otherwise.

He continues:

The first English translation appeared in 1922, alongside the original German and again with Russell’s introduction, slightly revised. This was for a series edited by C.K. Ogden, the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method. The translation appeared under Ogden’s name, though it was mainly undertaken by Frank Ramsey, then still just a precocious mathematics undergraduate. It also included some modifications by Wittgenstein himself. A revised edition, with further modifications by him, appeared in 1933.

Wittgenstein’s changes were prompted by what struck him as excessive faithfulness to the original German. They were designed to preserve, as he put it in a letter to Ogden, ‘the sense (not the words)’. We do well to remind ourselves, however, that Wittgenstein was not a native English speaker. Even with his modifications, the translation is often clunky. Its chief drawback, as Wittgenstein’s remark to Ogden intimates, and as Michael Morris has marvellously put it, is that it is ‘dog-literal’. Moreover, it is insensitive to some philosophically critical features of the German. A well-known example is its failure to heed the distinction that Wittgenstein draws between what is unsinnig (‘nonsensical’) and what is sin[n]los (‘senseless’) – where an empty tautology such as ‘What will be will be’ counts as the latter but not as the former. Brian McGuinness, in his 1988 biography of Wittgenstein, wrote that a ‘whole generation of English-speaking philosophers came to know the [Tractatus] through a translation which seems to have been … shackled by the presence of the German on the opposite page. It reads as if made from a dead language.’

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