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Wednesday 29 May 2019

Nuts and Bolts: monsters and microwaves.

Which animal do the French call after a snake-haired monster?

Some clues: if you were Danish you would call it vandman, which means water man.

If Spanish aguamala, or bad water.

In Hungarian, it would be an erélytelen ember, or feckless one.*

Any ideas?

I was led to this subject after being told that in Welsh this animal is called a pysgod wibli wobli. Sadly that turned out not to be quite true. The term pysgod wibli wobli has become very popular in Wales (it is, after all, utterly delightful) but the normal Welsh word for this animal (all right, it's the jellyfish) is pysgod môr.

Still, to console us, there's also another new and popular Welsh term, this time for the microwave, the popity ping, or oven that goes ping. 

The idea of it warms me to the core of my being.

Word To Use Today: your local one for jellyfish.

*Or so the notoriously inaccurate Google translate tells me.



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