.

. . .

(PART 2)

    Waldeinsamkeit 

(German)

"The feeling of being alone in the woods"

   

Zaida

(Ukranian)

 “one who came from the outside"

Or, "a foreign alien invader"

Apophenia

(Latin)

"the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data"

  Queesting

(Dutch) 

 "When you invite someone into your bed for some pillow talk"

    Meraki 

(Greek)

"Doing something with passion"

    Age-otori

(Japanese)

"To look worse after a haircut"

    Tartle 

(Scottish)

"To hesitate in recognizing someone or remembering their name"

      
  

    Paraphernalia 

(Latin)

"a woman's property besides her; dowry,"

   
    Sgriob 

(Gaelic)

"The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey"

 Pudendum 

(Latin word)

External genitalia, literally: “thing to be ashamed of!” 

    Bakku-shan 

 (Japanese)

 "A beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind"


To close this special edition of Odd Etymology's INTERNATIONAL EDITION, i've chosen one English word that is comparable to these weird, wild, and eclectic ones:

Fudgel 

 An eighteenth-century term meaning "Pretending to work when you're not actually doing anything at all."

Jollygood, that's all for now.

May the Totoro be with you all.

Theo "Gulliver" Zoic

Worldly Words (part 1)

       Within the English language there are countless ways of describing feelings, physical things, moments, concepts, and various situations from real or imaginary – and all usually take quite a collection of words to paint that metaphoric picture. Not so with other languages, in fact the following list of international words will prove that unlike English, highly colorful situations, rich emotional journeys, and oddly humorous “metaphoric pictures” are easily painted by single words. May i present to you a most bodacious and bombastic grouping of weird words that Adam Jacot de Boinod terms “Tojours Tingo”.

        I just consider them the “Jolly Jello” of international alphabet soup; or delightful nonsense. Enjoy!

Sitzpinkler 

(German)

    Slang for “wimp,” literally translated as “a man who sits to pee”.

Koi No Yokan 

(Japanese)

   The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.

Voorpret 

(Dutch)

    The feeling you have just before you are about to do something fun

Backpfeifengesicht

(German)

    A face badly in need of a fist.

Gokotta

(Swedish) 

 “a dawn picnic to hear the first birdsong”

Mokita 

(Papua New Guinea) 

"the truth we all know but agree to not talk about."

    Eomchina 

 As the webstite Lingholic says, “(엄친아) is a hilarious Korean word that is a contraction of the phrase “Mom’s friend’s son” (엄마친구아들). Korean mothers are often very competitive and compare their children against the offspring of their friends. This word is used to describe a person who is more successful or skilled than you – the kind of person your mother would compare you to in a negative light so as to motivate you to study harder.”

    

Apeiron 

(Greek)

 The "limitless, endless, infinite" or, the creation of the cosmos.

 Boketto 

(Japanese) 

“the act of gazing vacantly into the distance.”

    Kummerspeck

(German)

 Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, “grief bacon.”

Gattara

(Italian) 

 "An old and lonely woman, dedicated to her cats."

Forelsket

 (Norwegian)

"The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love."

To be Continued. . . .next week with twelve more resplendently weird worldy words.

Giddy with Giggles

Nickelodeon - a nickel show of music or theatrics

Lunch - from luncheon - from nuncheon which means a midday meal or “noon drink”

Book - German for beech since Runes were carved into beechwood slabs

Museum - "a seat or shrine of the Muses"

Glamour - "magical enchantment" . . . and here we have old-school glamour:

Follies - a theatrical revue with lots of pretty girls

Recalcitrant - kicking back!

Reticulate - little net

This is NOT recalcitrant'ing the reticulate . . . but its close:

Axiom - that which is thought worthy

Trance - “fear of coming evil (or, numb with fear)”

Merkabah - wikipedia puts it best: '"chariot" in Hebrew - denotes a type of Jewish mysticism based on Ezekiel's vision of the chariot of fire, i.e., God's throne chariot, a four-wheeled vehicle pulled by four Cherubim, each with four wings and four faces. Note that the Israeli Defense Forces have a main battle tank called the Merkava.'

Access - an attack of fever

Pinocchio - from Italian author Carlo Collodi, probably from Italian pino 'pine' and occhio 'eye'.

Apocalypse: a cataclysmic event which causes “insight, vision; hallucination”

Reishi - from Vietnamese linh chi, literally "spirit mushroom”

Now, a fun string of words that could define a person who imitates a senile fool possessed by spirits.

Giggles - "imitative"

Gaga - "senile, foolish” (but also a Sumerian term for Pluto)

Giddy - old English: meaning “possessed by a spirit”
 

Cum -  from “come” in a sexual way. First used by Bishop Percy in his “Walking in A Meadow Greene”.

Tortoise - Late Latin tartaruchus "of the underworld" or perhaps tortus "twisted," based on the shape of the feet.

Loofah - from Arabic lufah, the plant name from which the sponge grows

Persimmon - Powhatan for any fruit “dried artificially”. Still, i do relish a 3 month old Hoshigaki:

Benedict - newly married man (or, a “blessed bachelor” from Shakespeare’s character of the same name in Much Ado about Nothing; 1599)

SCUBA - acronym for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus”

Newt - a misdivision of an ewte, from Middle English evete (or “eft”)
    Aristotle, and especially Pliny, are responsible for the fiction of an animal that thrives in and extinguishes fires (a salamander). The eft lives in damp logs and secretes a milky substance when threatened, but there is no obvious natural explanation its connection with the myth.
    Also used 18c. for "a woman who lives chastely in the midst of temptations" (after Addison), and "a soldier who exposes himself to fire in battle." To rub someone a salamander was a 19c. form of German student drinking toast (einem einen salamander reiben).

LASTLY, i present to the world. . . The New Word of the day: 
Shitenfreude - "such extreme laughter from others pain, to point where it make you shit your pants."

Ciao for now, folks!
Keep riding the wave of the winds like little fun-guys. . . as the spirit of ghibli would itself!

Templars and Triskaidekaphobes (fear of 13)

 
"It’s a terrible day for triskaidekaphobes"Adeel Hassan writes for the New York Times — "people scared of the number 13 — and friggatriskaidekaphobes, [people] who fear 13, but only on Fridays. Another term for a fear of Friday the 13th is paraskavedekatriaphobia."

And there's more to the freaky-friday story, but here's the fun poop-scoop for now:

Boss - old French for “a swelling tumor”

Cajole - french for “chatter like a jay” or, be enticed into a caged

Apricot - Arabic for “early ripening (peach)”

Ginko - Japanese for “silver peach”

Saskia - "protector of humankind" in Dutch, or “valley of light"

Zero - an Arabic symbol & cipher for “naught” or empty space. Nothing.
(Also a character in the best Wes Anderson film ever - The Grand Hotel Budapest. . . )

Diatribe - "employment (by Plato) for critical dissertation", or more simply: "the wearing away (of time)"

Apocalypse - Greek "from the good spirit"

Musk - one of the various root words means “testicle” from muska-s (Persian). The testicle may have resembled the mouse “mus"

Testicle “bear witness to male virility” a strange combo of testis “witness” and testament”

Croon - “to bellow like a bull” . . . mountain oysters anyone??? 

Fantastic - from Greek phantazein: “to make visible”

Crucial - Francis Bacon’s reference to the cross roads, derived from "Crux".

Spud - a short or stumpy person. . .

(a spud peeling spuds, hah!)

Bombastic - inflated

Protocol, literally means “first glue” in Greek

Quack - “ignorant pretender” but derived from a shortened form of quacksalver: prattle

Bachelor - young knight (training in arms)

Mausoleum - from Persian King of Caria, Mausolos Satrap. His “magnificent tomb” was built by his wife (and sister!) Artemesia. It was one of the seven wonders of the world.

Cappadocia in Turkey, hold many of these tombs.

Pigin = pidgeon, an English bastardization of the Chinese word for “business”. And they certainly are industrious business people. Last time i traveled to Costa Rica, they had liquor stores there - in the middle of Central America's jungley NOWHERE!

Epiphany - festival of the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles

Fascination - act of bewitching

Pattern - from patron, in the sense of a master giving an example for disciples to copy.

Now for a fascinating pattern in history - its often a misrepresentation of a special date (Friday the 13th) that gets an new sugar coated wrapper (as in the fabled Paul Revere Ride during the Civil War) and this moment the horror associated with Friday the 13th (not even mentioning the Paris incident). I won't go on any further, because this image summarizes the origins of not a word but a modern historic lore -

Right-o Folks,
May the Tao be with you,
Glutenous Gluteus

A Menagerie of Misleading Words!

The noun HOME means what you think it does, while the term homing originated around 1765 from pigeon used as carriers.

Darjleeling - Tibetan for “diamond island”

Insurance - 1550’s word meaning “engagement to marry”

Happy - "favoured by chance"

Pariah - a "drummer" (at festivals in India, the hereditary duty of members of the largest of the lower castes was to play the drum. . . unlike in America where to be a drummer means great rewards of pussy and free coke).

Avid - "greedy"

Placid - "to please"

Diamond - the hardest metal, in Latin: “adiamantem,” which i find to be a familiar term used to define the ficticious metal which fused into Wolverine to make his bones unbreakable. X-Men and Latin connections, who would have thought!)

Astrolabe - "star taken"

Numinous - "divine approval expressed by nodding the head"

Dork - "penis" (slang for dumb)

This next one is great because a) its a slight segue from dork, to a word reminiscent of a certain Steve Martin film and b) we may be able to see its first incarnation (or invention) in a song popularized in O, Brother Where Art Thou?

. . . Jerk - American carnival slang of uncertain origin, maybe meaning “tedious and ineffectual person," as in the 1935 song "Big Rock Candy Mountain". The lyrics go: "where they hung the jerk that invented work”. . . hmmm, sounds right to me.

Heretic - comes from Greek, meaning “able to choose.”

Educate - "bring out (of ignorance) and lead forth."

Plane - possibly from Greek “pelanos,” meaning the sacrificial cake offered to the gods. Commonly spread out on an altar perhaps.

The best comes in last - here ya' are

Chow - California slang for food, stemming from chow-chow; from Chinese pidgin English for cha (tsa) meaning “mixed." Just like a Chinese dog breed called “cha,” which may be called as-such because mixed breeds of dogs were mutts, right, and mutts were easily identified as food for consumption. Right?

Hangin' Out - in Outter Space

   
     "Hang" is a 13th century verb "to suspend." Further on in the 15th century its a noun for "a curtain; sling."
   
      Furthermore, to be suspended in one's thoughts is a psychological fixation known as a “hang up”. But one can also “hang-up” the phone and have a "hang-nail".

       Yet further, we can hang someone for a lynching and completely 180º from that violent action we have a craftsman who learns a new skill by “getting the hang of it.” And, if your hot to trot - try this little diddy a carpenter once told me:

its all about the angle of the dangle,
relative to the heat of the meat,
causing the size of the rise,
and the mass of the ass,
to expand all dimensions of extension.
Thus, the throb of the knob,
is proportional to the bootie of the cutie..... 

    Which could lead us to assume this fellow is either a consumer of nasal spray Viagra (a plain dick-head) or he is possibly “well hung”.

     Opposite once again, we have“hang-dog,” a despicable person. Of which you may be if your go the Federal Courts and the jury cannot decide about your crime so they are a “hang jury” at a standstill.    
     But innocently kids “hang around”, "hang out",  and in England sometimes “hang an arse.” Also, there's “hang fire,” hang-loose, and let it "all hang out", man.

    But to end on this odd etymology i will say two things: Hang (pronounced 'hong') is the name of a Vietnamese friend of mine and hang is also a modern sound instrument from Sweden (the hang drum) which is basically a 4th dimensional inspirational form of alien technology passed down to us sub-consciously and subliminally in musical form.

Really, look at that thing!

Now for the "Poop"

    I really wanted to title this post "The Nitty Gritty" but after looking up that phrase it was not all that much worthwhile for a meaningful beginning. Being not much more than a reference to Jazz players who tweaked this lingo from "finely ground corn". Thus we may have heard Fats Waller shout out a hundred years ago, "Hey Tuba Skinny, what's the nitty-gritty today?!"

    POOP, however not only an ignoble eye-catching (and fly catching) grand title, but also a fun etymology. So lets get started!


Poop - "the stern of a ship" where the steering of gears would maneuver the vessel. Recently becoming a military term regarding the necessary facts needed to command and captain the ship. So poop means "up-to-date-information" and much like the nitty-gritty you can say, "give me the poop, please".

Desire - an Old French phrase de sidere, "from the stars”

Youngster - "young-star"

Sky - is a simple Norse word meaning "a cloud". How's that for a paradox.
(May i remind you all of a previous post about "clouds" which literally means "rocks")

Cathedral -from kata-hedra: “the down face of a geometric solid”
 
Geek - "a croaking sideshow freak"
  
Ambulance - “walking (hospital)"

Bizarre - "handsome, brave," and as EtymologyOnline insightfully comments that it is perhaps from Basque bizar meaning, "a beard" because the history of bearded Spanish soldiers making a strange impression on the French to the point of influencing the development of this word.

Lazarus - Hebrew for “God has helped”



F.U.C.K. – well the rumors about this take on English's most popular four-lettered word are more interesting than the facts. Legend goes that it was an accronym describing the Biblical wisdom a person would possess for being intimate with another and thus, “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”. . . . F U C K.

Horizon - "a bounding circle"

Graffit - "to scribble" (originating from "ancient wall inscriptions found in the ruins of Pompeii!")

Mustard - "new wine"

Mayonnaise - named in recognition of Mahon, seaport capital of island of Minorca, captured by France 1756 after the defeat of the British defending fleet in the Seven Years' War.


Peewee - "a small marble"

Further acronym speculations about the etymology of NEWS: "north, east, west, and south"



Colossus - unknown in origin however first used by Herodotus when describing giant Egyptian statues.

Astronaut - a "star sailor"


Demiurge - "public worker"

Attitude: used "originally in 17th century as a technical term in art for the posture of a figure in a statue or painting; later generalized to "a posture of the body supposed to imply some mental state”.(EtymologyOnline.com)




To close this entry, here is a most perplexing word humour of which i don't know what to make because its referenced in a few cultures all with similarly strange meanings.
Middle English for "fluid or juice of an animal or plant," or Latin for "body moisture".

In ancient and medieval physiology, "any of the four body fluids" (blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy or black bile) whose relative proportions were thought to determine state of mind. This led to a sense of "mood, temporary state of mind," first recorded 1520's.
(EtyologyOnline.com).


OkiDoki, stay healthy my friends. Be happy. And don't wet yourselves with too much humorous laughter. 

Hope you enjoyed the poop.
See you on the far side in the sky.