I was reading Casey Cep’s New Yorker review (archived) of Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman, by the carpenter Callum Robinson, when I got to this:
Closer to home, he recalls his father toughening him up by sending him into the forest to turn on a water line. Carrying only a parang and a T-bar, Robinson falls into a stream, is spooked nearly to death by a deer, and returns home twice in defeat, only to triumph in his third attempt […]
I had no idea what a parang or a T-bar might be. I thought I’d seen or heard the latter, but it turned out to be in the context of skiing — to quote Merriam-Webster, a T-bar is “a ski lift having a series of T-shaped bars each of which pulls two skiers.” I don’t know what it means here and will welcome all enlightenment. As for parang, the OED (entry revised 2005) informs me that it is “A large heavy machete with a blade broader at the end than at the base and a concave cutting edge, used in Malaysia and Indonesia for clearing vegetation or as a weapon”:
1820 The wood-cutter..proceeds into the forest, without any other instrument than his parang or cleaver.
J. Crawfurd, History of Indian Archipelago vol. III. ix. v. 4231882 Bakar..and a Malay boatman preceded us with parangs to clear the way of branches before us.
H. de Windt, On Equator 1031925 It was quite fascinating to see Sahar deftly cutting slices off one end of the husk with his sharp parang.
C. Wells, Six Years in Malay Jungle vi. 60
[…]2001 All six detainees are dangerous criminals who used weapons like knives and parangs to attack their victims while staging robberies.
Malaysia General News (Nexis) 18 December
The OED has the stress on the second syllable (British English /pəˈraŋ/ puh-RANG, U.S. English /pəˈræŋ/ puh-RANG), M-W on the first (ˈpär-ˌaŋ), which suggests sloppiness on someone’s part. I’m not sure why the word is used in the context of a scene set in the eastern Lowlands of Scotland, but I’m glad to know it; it is, as you might have guessed, a borrowing from Malay parang.
As it happens, there’s an entirely different word parang, this one meaning “A variety of Trinidadian folk music, traditionally played at Christmas by groups which travel from house to house serenading the occupants; a performance or tune in this style”; that one is said to be “< Spanish parranda outdoor celebration with music, party, revel,” which is phonetically a bit odd, but I guess the OED knows what they’re doing. In any case, it’s labeled “Caribbean (chiefly Trinidad and Tobago)” and pronounced with first-syllable stress (British English /ˈparaŋ/ PARR-ang, U.S. English /ˈpɛrænɡ/ PAIR-ang, Caribbean English /ˈparaŋ/).
I knew both of the tool names. A parang is a machete, or specifically a machete with a back curving blade, typical of Malaya where the name comes from. This is a T-bar for turning water on and off; I have one next to my front door and another one, which comes apart into two pieces, in the trunk of my car.
Thanks @Brett, yes that’s immediately what I thought of. More familiar to me than the ski-lift variety. Doesn’t every property have a mains water valve out on the street/sidewalk?
(Though I think ‘T-bar’ could apply to any number of wotsits with a long bar and cross-handles.)
Thanks to both of you, and the lexicographers should pay more attention to household devices!
Oh, and Brett: which syllable of parang do you stress?
According to my textbooks and in line with my limited exposure to spoken Malay, Malay has (relatively weak) penultimate stress (which, of course, doesn’t reliably predict how the word is stressed in English).
For me it definitely has strong first syllable stress, like the way it is pronounced by this Southeast Asian YouTuber.
Thanks!
Concave would be rather remarkable… the ones in the video all have convex ones, as expected.
AntC, round here there’s usually a valve with the meter, including a easy to use handle, no need for a T-bar.
T-bar theory is useful in Generative Grammar for twisting facts until they align with phrase structure rules properly.
Concave in which direction? (Like the shape of a billhook, or like hollow grind?)
Concave in which direction?
In the direction you’re looking when it looks like a cave that you’re looking into.
Concave, as in parentheses described by an errorist (q.v.)
Some of them seem to have sigmoid blades; perhaps the convex and concave zones are used for different types of cut and thrust.
Concave would be rather remarkable
Scythes generally have concave blades, in order (I believe) to help gather up the stalks as you mow them.