hazelnuts/filberts (fwd)

[Peter A. McGraw]

My message still hasn't surfaced, so I'm forwarding the copy from my "sent
mail" box to the usual ADS-L address instead of the one that came up when I
replied to Herb Stahlke's message.  My apologies for the repetition if the
original one eventually shows up. --PMc

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Mon, Jul 3, 2000 8:46 AM -0700rrom: "Peter A. McGraw"
<pmcgraw at linfield.edu>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: hazelnuts/filberts

You know, I didn't mention this in my original post because I didn't want
to complicate the picture, but I grew up thinking there was a distinction.
At some point during my childhood, I figured out that filberts were the
round nuts and hazelnuts were the elongated ones that tasted the same.  At
some point later, after we moved to a filbert farm in Oregon, my mother
explained to me that a filbert was a cultivated hazelnut (hazelnut being
the wild variety that grows on what is more like a bush than a tree).  That
explanation squared very well with my perception that they were called
"filberts" in Oregon where they're grown commercially, and "hazelnuts"
everywhere else, where people don't know the difference.

Since "hazelnut" seems to be supplanting "filbert" as the designation for
the nut you find in cans and in candy (even though all such nuts are the
cultivated variety), it seems to me that if that distinction (i.e., wild
versus cultivated) was ever widely maintained, it is no longer.

Peter Mc.

--On Sat, Jul 1, 2000 11:41 PM -0400 Herb Stahlke <hstahlke at GW.BSU.EDU>
wrote:

> It has been assumed throughout this discussion that hazelnuts and filberts
> are the same thing, an assumption confirmed by several dictionaries.  I
> hadn't challenged it until I came across the following in Roger Lass'
> fascinating Historical Linguistics and Language Change (CUP 1997):
>
> ABELENA "filbert":haeselhnutu "hazelnut".  Either the glossator does not
> know the difference in shape between the two nuts, or this is [a
> cross-cultural gloss (HS)].  (p. 88)
>
> Lass, who has a pretty good record for careful scholarship, seems to know
> something the dictionaries don't.  Does anyone have confirming evidence or
> is Lass wrong this time.  By the way, I'm aware that the term "filbert"
> comes from St. Philbert's Day, approximately the time that they ripen.
> This doesn't help answer the question of whether they are two different
> nuts.
>
> Herb Stahlke
> Ball State University



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                                Peter A. McGraw
                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu

---------- End Forwarded Message ----------



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                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu