Spot the Frippet: pottle.

This is a word to bring a smile to the grumpiest Monday morning face.

Pottle.

Could any word be more fun to use?

Pottle pottle pottle pottle pottle POTTLE pottle pottle...

This gorgeous word has fallen into sad disuse everywhere in the world except, thankfully, for New Zealand, where it has not only been saved from extinction but has been given a new meaning which is actually rather useful.

Pottles aren't hard to spot, either.

A pottle of the more-or-less-extinct kind used to be equal to half a gallon (that's about two and a quarter litres)* but nowadays, although it's only in New Zealand that they have their proper name, there are once again pottles to be seen everywhere. 

What are they? Well, a pottle is a plastic or cardboard container for foods such as yogurt or salad.

See? You never thought you could learn to love a plastic tub, did you.

And now you can.

Word To Use Today: pottle. This word comes from the Old French potel, which means a small pot, which might in turn come from the Latin word pōtus, which is a drink.

I think it's a word that deserves to travel.

*No, it really is: heaven help us all, but a US gallon is bigger than a UK gallon.

 

Sunday Rest: Word Not To Use Today: perfume

It's not so bad when a horrible word describes a disgusting object(like last week's horror, rumen) but sometimes, sadly, something exquisite is weighed down by a nasty heavy word.

Like perfume.

See? Something airy and light brought down to earth by two stodgy syllables.

Of them the first, per, is dull, and the second fume, brings to mind (well, to my mind, anyway) the sinister fume cupboard in the Chemistry Lab at school which so often, like a dyspeptic ogre,  leaked throat-catchingly noxious niffs.

Luckily we have alternatives at our command, of which fragrance, sweetness (it's Waste its sweetness on the desert air, by the way, not fragrance) and scent are all lovely.

So why use the word perfume?

Because you have a tin ear, that's why.

People won't like you for it, you know. 

Word Not To Use Today: perfume. This word probably comes from the Old Provençal word perfum, which is in turn from the Latin per, which means through, and fumar, to smoke.

 

Saturday Rave: The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

A hero is usually brave, and quite often good-looking.

Rich is a wonderful bonus, kind is great, and of high social status (ie prince) is gorgeous.

Sometimes, though, all you want in a hero is for him to be someone...

...well, someone quite like you.

Someone not too bright; someone who spends most of the time wondering what on earth's going on...

...someone all-too-easily tempted...

...and then, of course, all he needs is rescuing.



Word To Use Today: sorcerer. This word comes from the French sorcier, from the Latin sors, which means lot (ie the sort of lot you cast, as in a lottery).

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Der Zauberlehrling) is a poem by Goethe written in 1797. It was almost certainly based on a story by Lucien written in around 150 AD.

Word To Use Today: spug.

After all that rich food and entertainment I thought it might be nice to reflect on something small and plain.

A spug, in fact. Or a spuggy: they're the same thing.

This, if you're from the North of England, is a spug:


Photo by Darren Lewis.

I'm afraid that image is a bit big, but it's worth looking at, isn't it. A spug (or a house sparrow, as most people call them) isn't just a boring brown thing, is it?

Even the females are beautiful:



though they're rather bossy and tend to rule the roost despite being smaller than the males.

The spug comes originally from Europe and Asia, but it's been taken to Africa and Australia and America:


see the nest hole?

In fact spugs have got themselves more or less everywhere. They've bred in an English coal mine 640 m below ground, and fed at the top of the Empire Stare Building. They're the wild bird with the largest distribution in the world.

We humans have lived with spugs for around 10,000 years, and they've come to represent vulgarity (as in my little Cockney sparrow) and, rather surprisingly, romantic desire.

When I was young the old men used to talk of catching spugs with back-flapping nets. The nets were on large frames, and people would beat the hedgerows at night to make the spugs fly up into them.

Gosh, we wouldn't be so fat if we'd had spuggy pie for dinner, instead of turkey, would we.

For one thing, hardly any of us could be able to bring ourselves to eat it.

Word To Use Today: spug. Sparrow is a lovely word, but spugs are birds with attitude and I think spug encapsulates that beautifully.

It's a variant of the Scottish sprug.


The sparrow hieroglyph was probably a sign meaning small, narrow, or bad.

On the other hand, there are those who say it meant "a prolific man" or "the revolution of a year".

If you see an Ancient Egyptian, do ask.

railway rant

Yep, it's still raining here in England.

Devon and Cornwall were practically cut off last week: even the buses which were replacing the trains cancelled because the railway lines were underwater couldn't get along because the roads were flooded, too.

There were railway lines not affected by the floods; but some of them were affected by landslides.

Ah well, it all makes for a little excitement: and never have I felt so grateful to live on a hill.

Now, as we keep being told, the important thing if you're obliged to travel is to keep an eye on the official announcements.

This one was in the Daily Telegraph on the 22nd December:

'Rail transport is being hampered across the South West. First Great Western is advising all customers with "non-essential travel" not to travel west of Taunton in either direction.'

It took me a little while to work this out, but I think they meant: rail customers west of Taunton are advised not to travel.

Ah well, I expect the poor railway announcers were much too busy with all those disasters all over the place to worry too much about being comprehensible.

Word To Use Today: west. This word is Old English. It's related to the Latin vesper and the Greek hésperos, which both mean evening.The word west is also linked to the name of one of the four dwarves in Norse mythology, Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri, who each represented one of the directions of the world.

Nuts and Bolts: Sami.

You can't think of a New Year's resolution? Well, how about  learning a new language?
 
Yes, I know you're busy, but how about learning just a few phrases of a language that you're not going to need until right at the end of 2013? That gives you plenty of time.
 
Sami is a group of six languages spoken in Lapland, and which I assume must be Father Christmas's mother tongue (actually, does FC have a mother? Ah well, you know what I mean.)

None of the Sami languages has many speakers: Skolt Sami has only four hundred speakers, and the most widely spoken, Northern Sami, has only a few thousand
 
I know that Father Christmas' translation elves work very efficiently, but I'm sure the great man would be touched if we took the time to learn a few words of Sami.

So here we are.
 
Gii dovie lea? [Who's that over there?]

Ja, Father Christmas don leat. [Ah, you are Father Christmas.]

Buorre Beavi! [hello!]
 
Mu namme lea Sally [My name is Sally]

Giitu! [Thank you]

...and, er, sorry, that's as far as I've got with Sami. Still, it's start, isn't it. After that we can just smile a lot.

And, as with almost everything, it's the thought that counts.

Word To Use Today: something in Sami. Sami contains all sorts of useful words. For example: albmaolmmoš means a real person; dolin means in the olden days, monnut means to lay eggs, and vustet means to make cheese.

There we are. All useful words we don't have in English. Marvellous, or what?
 
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Thing To Do Today: recover.

Of course it's traditional to start the New Year with a nice festive hangover; to approach this fresh start, this glorious opportunity, this infinite marvel, with lightning-bolts of agony blasting through our brains at the merest crack of an eyelid; to begin our journey through a year of a thousand tantalising tastes and textures with a mouth apparently lined with mouldy cottonwool; to commence our conquest of a hundred mountains with a body so weak that opening the medicine cabinet door is eough to make the bathroom belly-dance worryingly around us.

Ah well. I hope last night was one to remember, anyway. And if you can't remember it, then, honestly, all those stories probably aren't true. At least, that one with the guinea pig and the vicar? Physically impossible.

I realise this screen is lungeing at you like a particularly irritable Mike Tyson, so I'll go away quietly, now.

Happy New Year.

Thing To Do Today: recover. This word comes from the Old French recoverer, from the Latin recuperāre, which means to recuperate.