Multilingual Word of the Day

Müller m /ˈmʏlɐ/

[noun] miller

Collins German Dictionary

Today we’re going to be keeping the World-Cup-inspired theme going as my Word of the Day today is the German Müller (just in case you don’t know why that’s relevant but for some reason care: Thomas Müller).

Müller is the most common surname in Germany (along with its northern equivalent Möller) but as with many surnames in German and English, it dervies from an occupation. That occupation is miller, also a common surname in English.

pazo m /ˈpaθo, ˈpaso/

[noun] country house

palacio m /paˈlaθjo, paˈlasjo/

[noun] palace

[noun] mansion

Collins Spanish Dictionary

Some languages have doublets (or even triplets). These are words that mean slightly different things but possess a relatively recent common root. This usually occurs when a word in the ancestor language is allowed to run its normal diachronic course and then, at some later stage, this same root word is borrowed back into the language, often being adapted in the process.

Once such example is to be found in the Spanish words pazo and palacio. Both words come from the neuter Latin word palatium. However, pazo has been in Spanish and its ancestors since the days of Rome, whereas palacio was loaned in from Latin in much more recent times.

This phenomenon is incredibly common in the Romance languages as well as English. I have no doubt this also happens elsewhere. For example, Russian has plenty of borrowings from Old Church Slavonic that are cognate to other Russian words, голова and глава to name just one.

finocchio m /fiˈnɔkkjo/

[noun] fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

[noun] various other plants belonging to other genera

[noun, colloquial] gay, queer, poof

Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere ed arti

As we’ve seen before with the Hebrew ג׳וק, words can often have a “usual” or “primary” sense and another separate colloquial, seemingly unconnected sense (even when this is not because two older words happened to have developed into the same modern word).

emmotoka /emːotoka/

[noun] car

Luganda, FSI Basic Course

To a new language today, namely Luganda (also known as Ganda). This is a language which has attracted my interest in the past couple of weeks. A Bantu language, Luganda is, as one might expect, spoken in the Republic of Uganda by a total of around 5 million people (including those for whom it is a second or third language).

Dear all,

After an unplanned hiatus of around a month (caused by many things) I will be back up and running from this point on!

My third Word of the Month is saucissonner.

So far that’s one noun, one adjective, and now, one verb.

saucissonner /sɔsisɔˈne/

[verb] to cut into slices

[verb] to tie up tightly

[verb] to eat a cold meal on the go

Dictionnaire Larousse Maxipoche 2013

inglenook /ˈɪŋgəlnʊk/

[noun] the nook or corner beside the “ingle”; chimney-corner

Oxford English Dictionary

Today I present you with my first ever English Word of the Day (if we don’t count Old English) and it’s been a long time coming!

Presumably, we all know what a “nook” is, but what on Earth is an “ingle”? Well, as far etymologists can work out, it comes from an old Scottish Gaelic word, namely aingeal. 

This word’s primary meaning “angel” but it can also be used metaphorically, euphemistically to mean “fire” or “light”. So, it turns out that the seemingly strange word “inglenook” means exactly what its components mean (sort of).

safari IX-X /sɑˈfɑɾi/

[noun] journey

[noun] trip

[noun] travel

[noun] safari

Swahili-English English-Swahili Practical Dictionary

If there’s one Swahili word most people in the world will know, apart from jenga, it’s safari. I hardly need explain that in English “safari” means “an often touristic trip whose purpose is to photograph or hunt wild animals in their own environment, usually the African savannah”.

The word can have the same meaning in Swahili; however, it is also the normal word for any journey, trip or voyage.

ditier m /diˈtjer/

[noun] poem

Vocabulaire d’ancien français

Flicking through my Old French vocab book, I happened to spot the word ditier. This word broadly meant “poem” and it occurred to me that this was probably the origin of the English word “ditty”. Unsurprisingly, this word is of Latin origin and comes from the past participle dictatus, dictāre meaning not only “to dictate” but also “to compose”.

It should be noted that Old French spelling and pronunciation was not fixed and varied from region to region, even town to town and so alternative spellings such as ditié, ditiet, dité or ditee can be found.

мечта f /mʲɪ't͡ɕta/

[noun] dream

Collins Russian Dictionary & Grammar

kameno /kaˈmeno/

[noun] fireplace

La Simpla Vortaro

Ohrwurm m /ˈoːɐ̯vʊʁm/

[noun] earwig

[noun, colloquial] catchy song, “earworm”

Collins German Dictionary

This is another word brought to my attention by the BBC’s Why Factor podcast.

The primary meaning of the German word Ohrwurm is “earwig” but that’s not why I’ve chosen it. Its secondary meaning is something along the lines of “a song that won’t get out of your head”. This is sometimes found in English as “earworm” - a literal translation of the German.

It’s been a while since I've provided an example sentenced so here is one taken from the source above:

Der Schlager ist ein richtiger Ohrwurm.

vuslat /vusˈɫat/

[noun] union or reunion with one’s beloved

Turkish-English, English-Turkish Dictionary

cruimh f /krˠɪw/

[noun] grub

[noun] maggot

[noun] worm

Irish dictionary online

A first Irish word today and this post has a connection with the previous.

The Irish cruimh can mean “grub”, “maggot” or “worm” and is from the Indo-European root *kʷr̥mis which meant more or less the same thing. As such, it is cognate with many other semantically similar words throughout Europe and Asia. In the Celtic languages there is the Welsh pryf. Further afield there is the Sanskrit कृमि (kṛ́mi). The Lithuanian kirmis is related to cruimh and this brings us closer to our connection.

The Proto-Slavic root that meant “worm” was *čьrvь and this is the source of the Russian червь, Ukrainian черв’як, Bulgarian червей, Polish czerw and Czech červ.

This root also produced the word for “red” in many of these languages. This is because the Polish cochineal (Porphyrophora polonica) produces maggoty, wormy larvae and this insect was used to produce a red dye.

krásný /ˈkraːsniː/

[adjective] beautiful

Czech-English English-Czech Concise Dictionary

The Czech word krásný means “beautiful” and is cognate with the Russian word красный /ˈkrasnɨj/ which means “red”. The Russian for “beautiful” is красивый /krɐˈsʲivɨj/ and this too is cognate with krásný. Once upon a time красный did mean “beautiful” but over time it came to mean red, almost entirely displacing червонный /t͡ɕɪrˈvonːɨj/ which is cognate with the Czech word for “red”, červený. In fact, Red Square (Красная площадь /ˈkrasnəjə ˈploɕːətʲ/) originally meant “Beautiful Square”.

kælling c /ˈkεleŋ/

[noun] aggressive, foul-mouth or hysterical woman

Den Danske Ordbog

For my second Danish word I have chosen kælling which means something like “hag”, “cow” or even “bitch”.

ruokahalu /ˈruo̯kɑhɑlu/

[noun] appetite

[noun] relish

Ilmainen sanakirja

The Finnish for “food” is ruoka and “desire” is halu and when you put them together you get the Finnish word for “appetite”.