LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.17 (01) [A/E]

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From: Peter Snepvangers <snepvangers at optushome.com.au>
Subject: Etymology


From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Lexicon
"Canister" seems to be from Gr as you suggest. The origins of this "can" are
unclear. It is prob cognate with OE "canne" but not descended from it.

I think "canny" is likely to be from the verb "can" in the senses related to
"able to do" but that is cognate with roots meaning "know" so does "ken"
come in? This "can" seems to have arisen from the idea "I know how to so I
am able to". I don't know how common this kind of development of meaning is
but in Classical Greek one of the verbs for "know" is "gignosko", a
reduplicated form from the root "-gn-" as in "can" and "know" and G "kennen"
and "koennen", etc, and the other is "oida", a perfect which originally
meant "I have seen". We say "seeing is believing": the Greeks said "having
seen is knowing".

Hello John and Lowlanders,
I was thinking of ken as well. Today I was googling through articles on
runes and noticed the old Viking (Denmark, Sweden, Norwegian) alphabet
Futhark has 24 letters and the letter c is missing. It got me to wondering
about OE canne and Greek canastron again. The "anglo saxon" alphabet used in
England was gradually modified to 33 letters (Futhorc) probably due to sound
changes and the letter c is present by the 5th century. The word canne could
be latinised from the Greek and introduced to local British Celtic tribes by
Roman occupation who then passed it on to the new "Saxon" arrivals. OR it
could have been brought into Frisian/Saxon lingua a lot earlier via Roman
settlements on the continent. Is this a stupid thought?
Cheers
Peter Snepvangers
snepvangers at optushome.com.au

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From: Ingmar Roerdinkholder <ingmar.roerdinkholder at worldonline.nl>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

Hi Hugo

Grunniger 'wekken' = Dutch wecken, and that is a German loan word
Ingmar
>
> Gabriele and Peter
> Another memory chord is struck. When my  Grunniger mother used to preserve
> fruit she would say that she was "wekken" them. And, Peter, in Australia
she
> did that in Fowler's Vacola jars and these are as Gabriele describes - the
> glass lid is wired onto the body of the jar so that it hinges and the
rubber
> ring forms the seal.
>
> Hugo Zweep

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From: ezinsser at icon.co.za <ezinsser at icon.co.za>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology? Lexicon?" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

Haai julle,

Hugo Zweep verwys na die bottel van vrugte as "wekken".

Ons noem dit 'fles' (naamwoord) of 'bottel' (werkwoord) en as mens dit in
blikke
(tins/cans) sou wou koop, is dit 'geblikte' perskes of konfyt.

Gebottelde kwepers is natuurlik so skaars soos hoendertande, en lekker saam
met 'n
skaapvleisie!

Groete,
Elsie
Zinsser

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From: klaus schmirler <KSchmir at online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

> From: Hugo Zweep <hugo.zweep at valuersillawarra.com.au>
  When my  Grunniger mother used to preserve
> fruit she would say that she was "wekken" them. And, Peter, in Australia
she
> did that in Fowler's Vacola jars and these are as Gabriele describes - the
> glass lid is wired onto the body of the jar so that it hinges and the
rubber
> ring forms the seal.

Getting off topic now, but I just have to jot in somehow that
"einwecken" is not the only trademark-derived term in German for vacuum
sealing heated comestibles. The people there

http://www.wer-weiss-was.de/theme143/article2320029.html#2320029

know it, and they also know the history of the Weck company.

Cliffhanger. Well, the other term is "einrexen", and the Austrians do it
in Rex-Gläsern.

klaus schmirler

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From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

Peter wrote:
>I wonder if [can]is originally from the Greek canastron or
> from OE canne. ... Why do we have so many words in English that are spelt
> the same such as can (the tinned variety) and can (the permission
variety)?
> If there is a phonetic difference it is certainly minimal.

This is to accomodate people like me who are cryptic crossword puzzle
aficionados. English is the very best language for them, followed closely by
Dutch (which also has plenty of short words with double meanings); in
German, they don't work and don't exist at all, at least not in their "pure"
form.

I also love American logic puzzles; the British and Dutch are OK, but
usually too easy; all you can get in German are some British ones in
translation, and somehow they manage to take out the humour (and there is
only one magazine that has them at all). Also, in other countries they have
all kinds of really tough crosswords, math puzzles and logic variety puzzles
(such as battleships, Japanese paint-by-numbers, tentje-boompje etc.). Not
in Germany. Again, there is exactly one magazine that offers some easy
varieties of this kind of stuff.

All other puzzles that you can find in Germany are way too easy, at an
insultingly low level (what's the purpose of a crossword if you do it in two
minutes, just because you can't write any faster?); except for maybe one
magazine, which is rather hard to find these days, and still has no humour
whatsoever (it's pretty much geared toward people over seventy).

So much for the "Volk der Dichter und Denker"! Good thing I live rather
close to the Dutch border these days.

Gabriele Kahn

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From: daniel prohaska <danielprohaska at bluewin.ch>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

John wrote:

>>In Austria I was "told off" for saying "huebsch" with the pronunciation
>>shown in my dictionary, ie [Y], and told that it should be pronounced as
>>if spelt "hoepsch". "Hoebsch" is Luther's spelling so I wondered if, in
>>contrast to "Koenig" which changed its pronunciation to match its spelling
>>"huebsch" has its old spelling but an "imported" pronunciation. Or is this
>>just an Austrian Besonderheit? Do these sorts of things happen with HG
>>words imported into LS (or vice versa)?

John,
I'm Austrian. So it strikes me as odd that an Austrian would do this. First
of all Austrians are not really in the habit of telling people off. They
tend to grunt at you, and walk away complaining, but not usually in your
face - in Vienna they will even smile at you first and then growl at you
when you've turned your back to them. And secondly "hübsch" is very rarely
used except in Standard German which is generally not the colloquial
language. "Hübsch" is felt to be a little "Bundesdeutsch" (formally
"Reichsdeutsch") and the general word used in Austria (though I don't know
about Vorarlberg) is "fesch". I have never, ever heard it to be pronounced
as "höbsch".

In Austrian Standard German the <ü> in "hübsch" would actually be pronounced
even closer, fronted and most likely longer than in German Standard German.

Dan

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From: Kevin Caldwell <kcaldwell31 at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.09.16 (04) [A/E/F]

> From: Hugo Zweep <hugo.zweep at valuersillawarra.com.au>
> Subject: LL-L "Lexicon" 2004.09.16 (02) [E]
>
> Gabriele and Peter
> Another memory chord is struck. When my  Grunniger mother used to preserve
> fruit she would say that she was "wekken" them. And, Peter, in Australia
> she
> did that in Fowler's Vacola jars and these are as Gabriele describes - the
> glass lid is wired onto the body of the jar so that it hinges and the
> rubber
> ring forms the seal.

We have jars like that here in the US too, in addition to Mason jars
(curiously, the Mason jars made by Ball don't have the word "Mason" anywhere
on them, although the ones made by Atlas do.  But the box for the Ball jars
calls them Mason jars).

> From: john feather <johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk>
> Subject: Lexicon
>
> The usual explanation given for homomorphs (which I prefer to "homonyms",
> which different people seem to define in different ways)...

I thought the term for words that are spelled the same but with different
meanings (and possibly different pronunciations) was "homographs".  I've
never seen "homomorph" before (and my spellchecker doesn't recognize it).

Kevin Caldwell

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