St. Louis?

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Rankin, Robert L wrote:
> > I can't remember at the moment why it was named after 'Pain Court', or
> what 'Pain Court' really meant. I think somewhere there's an article
> that explains this. Bob, does this ring a bell?
>
> 'Fraid not, unless it's a reference to SHORT-BREAD.  But I would expect
> that expression to have originated in English.  (Do the French call
> baking fats by the name "shortening"?).  One of the OED guys on the list
> could attack that angle.

I had an oral version of the paper on one or more occasions while helping
with the computer end of the Gros Ventre dictionary.  I think Allan's
understanding is that pain court is more or less analogous to English
"short commons" or maybe in this case "starvation town."  In other words,
bread was not so much short (without yeast?) as in shortage.

It's interesting to consider that ppahiN (I think the nasalization is
right here) z^ide might be related to pain cort, but it doesn't look like
it holds up, and I've always assumed that Fletcher & LaFlesche were
correct in asserting that it was a reference to Clark's residence there.

PpahiN z^ide strikes me as a cross-linguistic pun raised to the level of a
folk etymology and quite in line with Omaha humor.  It reminds me of xidha
z^e or xidha giaN for 'Friday', though there's only a translation there,
no pun.  (I guess that would be xuya c^he in Dakota.)  I think hte
practice of introducing slight permutations in words to produce new
meanings for humorous effect are more or less universal.  I remember it
being obligatory in the dorms years ago to refer to certain brands of soda
as Mountain Spew and Dr. Pecker, and though neither of these is quite as
good a play on words as ppahi z^ide we were all impressed with our
wittiness.  (Similar things were done with other brands, but this sort of
thing can easily get out of hand.)