[Lexicog] Fw: French 'gueule'

[David Frank]

George --

Thank you for the information on the French word gueule. I was only confident about its meaning in St. Lucian Creole, and not in French. My Larousse French-English Dictionary lists the meaning as:

gueule f. mouth [animaux]; opening; muzzle [canon]; (pop.) mug, jaw || gueuler [-é] v. to bawl.

In English, we can refer to the muzzle of a gun or the muzzle of an ox. We have another St. Lucian Creole word andjélé meaning "to call loudly, to shout, to yell, to scream". In our Kwéyòl Dictionary we didn't have an etymology for that word, but now that I think about it, it must have come from French gueuler. But I don't know why the form in Creole is andjélé and not just djélé. There are a number of Creole words that I believe must have come from French but I can't tell exactly what they come from or how they got their precise shape. If and when I update our dictionary for a revised edition, I should seek your help with the etymologies.

Creole languages are known for shifting the meaning of words from their etymological meaning. George Huttar published an article about that in Language a number of years ago.

I don't have a copy of the book The Scarlett Letter available to me right now, but what you wrote, reminds me of the last sentence of the book as I recall: "On a field sable, the letter 'A' gules." I didn't really understand the meaning of that word until you explained it.

-- David Frank


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...

Finally, and apparently unrelated to the feminine 'gueule', there is also a French term 'gueules', from Persian, which is masculine singular and refers to the red color used on a coat of arms ('gules' in heraldic English).

George Aubin
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