Rumbling-pot

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Sat Aug 23 04:38:09 UTC 2003


I think "rumbling pot" is perhaps just a casual brute-force translation
from the Dutch. Maybe there's another word which is the 'correct' word in
English (although presumably very arcane) ... since I believe this type of
instrument was used centuries ago in Britain. (Or maybe it's been "rumbling
pot" for centuries?)

Why not "rumble-pot" instead? (I myself think [perhaps naively] that as a
calque this is better.) Google shows that it is indeed sometimes "rumble
pot", and a (presumably) printed example of this is found in the Project
Gutenberg collection ("The Path of LIfe" by Streuvels, in translation from
ca. 1915).

The Hippocrene Dutch-English dictionary shows also "rumbler" (as an English
equivalent of "rommelpot").

I've never heard of any of these before AFAIK.

-- Doug Wilson



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