French folk etymology: bleu-jaune

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In the 1960s a famous pair of films scandalized America: I AM CURIOUS 
(YELLOW)   and I AM CURIOUS (BLUE). Any connection?

In a message dated 9/9/08 7:45:23 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:


> At 10:46 PM -0400 9/8/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >We visited New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art Saturday and had a
> >great, if tiring, time.
> >
> >There's an exhibit there of "Pietre Dure", hard stone art in Europe:
> >inlays, sculpture, mosaics, etc. One lovely item was a pair of perfume
> >burners (61.101.1633,1634, catalog #138), made of "an intensely blue
> >Derbyshire fluorspar commonly known as 'blue john'. ... It became
> >popular among the nobility of France, where it was known as
> >'bleu-jaune'." (Mostly exact quotation with connecting bits of
> >paraphrase.)
> >
> >"Bleu-jaune" is literally 'blue - yellow', which makes no sense at all
> >for this intense deep blue color. :-)
> >
> That's neat.  That was one of my favorite exhibitions at the Met, but
> I somehow missed that particular caption.  The OED confirms that use
> of the term--
> 
> A local name of the blue Fluor-spar found in Derbyshire.
> 1772 GILPIN Lakes Cumberland (1788) II. 217 It..is known in London by
> the name of the Derbyshire drop. But on the spot it is called Blue
> John, from the beautiful blue veins which overspread the finest parts
> of it.
> 1840 W. HUMBLE Dict. Geol. & Min. (1843) s.v., The blue-john or fluor
> spar mine near Castleton in Derbyshire.
> 
> --but assays no etymology for the "john" (or "John") part.  The
> history of "bluejohn" > "bleu-jaune" tracks the (monolingual)
> development of the Rhode Island state dessert, "johnnycake" (possibly
> itself a naturalization of Narragansett "jonakin"), eventually
> folk-etymologized > "journey cake".
> 
> LH
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> 
> 




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