Tired of Pain Court yet?

[Michael Mccafferty]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Koontz John E wrote:

> On Fri, 2 Apr 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> > Yes, the pin court or pins courts was the suggestion that  i made
> > to the Siouan discussion list. No one seemed to like it, but it was the
> > only thing that made sense. I'll restate that position to that list.
>
> Well, I thought it was quite interesting lexically, though I gather from
> previous comments that pain and pin are not always homophonous in Canadian
> French and that there are, as Michael had observed,

No, no. I've been misrepresented!! Where's my lawyer?!

No, "pain" and "pin"  ARE homophonous in Canadian French and French
in general. In Canada speakers will either say [pe~] (tilde
over the e) for both of them, or [pI~] for both of them.

Alles klar?


 and I had also
> discovered, precedents for Paincourt as a placename.  I am not clear
> whether there are any precedents for Pin Court.
>

There was a note from Marc Picard forwarded to the Siouan list yesterday
that showed a place name near Montreal for Pin(s) Court(s).


> It does seem clear that pain court does not mean 'short(age) of bread' per
> se, but rather 'short loaf' in one dimension or another - length or
> height.  Apparently it could also mean 'shortbread' in the more technical
> sense.  I am not at all convinced that in any of these forms it is not
> perceived as a metaphor for poverty or hard or primitive living.
> Suggestions along these lines appear in both English and French.
>
Right. If we are talking about "short bread," then the term was either a
toponym brought from Quebec/Ontario and transplanted in St. Louis or a
nickname for some yahoo. Both of these are big IF's.



> The question has been raised as to whether there is any evidence of pains
> courts in the neighboorhood of St. Louis.
>
> By chance I noticed a while ago a description of the trees of St. Louis in
> the colonial period.  Houck's The Spanish Regime in Missouri, Vol. 1, p
> 49, contains a document dealing with the "Delivery of the Fort of El
> Principe de Asturias [near St. Louis], ..." March 19, 1769, whicbindicates
> that "The woods of which the stockade is composed are liar, ash, and
> yncomis."  Footnotes explain liar as a variant of French liard 'poplar',
> here referring to cottonwood, and indicate that yncomis may be ynconis,
> 'the name of a wood not in the dictionaries'.  Personally, I suspect that
> yncomis is a misreading and/or mangling of inconnus 'unknown(s)'.
> Liar(d) wood appears to figure prominently in the construction of the
> fort.
>
> There are references to pines and cedars on the Upper Missouri.
>
>
>
There are six species of "evergreens" native to Indiana and I suspect that
some of those are native to Missouri.

Michael