Rumbling-pot

[Peter A. McGraw]

The fact that several disparate Dutch sites in English use "rumbling-pot"
as a translation and one Dutch-language site even includes the English term
in the middle of an otherwise all-Dutch text seems to indicate that it's
more than just an individual translator's spontaneous creation.
"Rumble-pot" would sound more natural to me as well, but I think the hyphen
in "rumbling-pot" is used deliberately to mark it as a compound (like
rumble-pot) rather than simply a noun preceded by an adjective.  I.e., with
the stress on the first element rather than the second.  If I'm not
mistaken, the use of "rumbling" to form a compound rather than "rumble"
follows British usage, even though it sounds odd to American ears.  The
only parallel example that comes immediately to mind is Br. "cookery book"
instead of Am. "cookbook," though I realize this isn't an exact analogy.

Peter Mc.

--On Saturday, August 23, 2003 12:38 AM -0400 "Douglas G. Wilson"
<douglas at NB.NET> wrote:

> 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).



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