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#70338 06/08/02 05:38 PM
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Do you think the crocs were called so because of the bumpy texture of their skin? Gritty?

yes, the greek kroke is defined in my M-W10th as meaning shingle or pebble.

but, i never use the word shingle to mean a gravelly stretch of beach, particularly the sea coast. (but i'm sure many from the UK would say "then what ever do you call it?" i know the word (PD James "holy orders" (is it?) but the East coast has sandy beached (except way up in maine) so we just don't have to many shingles! here a shingle is something on your roof, unless your have a wood (shakes) or tiles, or tin (and no one has a tin roof, its always a standing seam tin roof, or a flat seamed tin roof, or some other modifier-- plain old tin roofs just don't exist! whoops, this is going off topic, maybe i'll copy it to misc, and we can discuss building parts!

but getting back to shingle as gravel, or a strip of gravel on a beach, yes, i feel sure that the bumby texture of the the croco's skin is the reason it is a kroke dilas!

and i think it the texure of the wrinkles in seersucker, (a gravelly texture) that it behind the name of the fabric.



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of troy, it is MEANT to be that this discussion is going on between you and me!! And who knows who else may have a word with which to wash this fabric.

Fabric. Your last word. There you are talking about shingles and roofs and tin and all that, and you move back to seersucker...

And, well, you're just not going to believe what I'm about to tell you, but it's true!! I was sitting at the Hungry Bear this morning waiting for my daughter, the cook there, to bring me breakfast, just reading the condensed OED at the bar, as word nerds are wont to do at breakfast bars, right? Anyway, I read the definition for fabric--big deal, huh?--until my eye caught sight of the second definition, which I never realized till this morning at the Hungry Bear:

fabric: walls, roof, and floor of a building

Now, have you at least, of troy, ever heard anybody, in real life, internet, or detective fiction, refer to the structure of the building, in earnest, as "fabric."

"I examined its fabric, and discovered, to my dismay, a leak in the attic."

I would have thought fabric was being used poetically, honest to goodness, but here I discover this morning in the unaffected fabric of the Hungry Bear that fabric is a bona fide word for the built structure itself.

Live and Learn,
Wordwind




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Well, i vaguely knew fabric meant more than cloth.

the old meaning of build up a structure is seen in the idiom 'a fabric of lies', or the fabrication.. the whole of Enron business plan was a fabrication..

Forge is a close cousin of a word from the same root---*dhabh meaning to fit together.. the current word came to english from the french in about 1483, (fabrique) meaning building. but the latin faber, was a term for an artisan who worked with hard materials, ie, a carpenter or smith.

so a carpenter, a kind of faber, fabricated buildings.. and in the 18th C., the sense of manufactured materials, gave rise to textiles, which were being made in fabricated buildings not at home, but in building specially fabricated for the manufacture of cloth!

the smith side of fabrication lead to the word forge-- meaning to make! and a forger is someone who makes something up, like iron works, or like lies, or fake money! interesting how both sides of the word have a meaning of lies/dishonesty isn't it?


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Thanks, of troy, for the etymology. Made me think of one of our previous discussions on lead and plumbs and plumbers and Pb and Rome.

Fabricate, fabrications, yes, those were more than good friends--but fabric as the physical structure of a building--specifically its roof, walls, and floors--that was brand new. Your tie-in to the manufacturing of textiles in a fabric--and then on to fabric being called so because it was fabricated, well, very interesting.

Care to expound upon textile or structure? (Hint, hint...)

Animal Safari, indeed. 'Tis the work of the human animal here today, at least.

Best regards,
WWorsted


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text-- (words) and textiles (cloth) are of course, related.

text (from the latin, <textus, fabric, stucture, text)> pp. of texere, to weave, and related to technic) is the actual structure of words

(i like the idea that text is weaving words together to form ideas!)

technic goes to the IE root of *tekth, to weave, to build, to join and gives rise to technical and technique. and the second meaning of the word, is: the study or principles of technology, an art, or the arts.


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Alright, who let the Wordies loose in the zoo?!
ROTFLMAO
In Spanish, crocodile is cocodrilo (latin-crocodilus) and alligator is caimán(no etymology cited but I suspect it is an indigenous word).


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i think caiman, like the caiman isles, is a carib (what was the name of the language awak....?) word.. and while alligators and crocodiles are in the same family of animals, they are different looking (croc's have pointier snouts, and gators have rounder ones.. ..

and i am not sure of distribution new world (americas)vs. old world..


#70345 05/09/03 09:19 PM
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"the kroke of the greek is related to the sanskrit sarkara which also mean pebble"

From the Apte Sanskrit Dictionary @
http:// http://aa2411s.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~tjun/sktdic/ :

The sanskrit word 'sharkaraa' (though the phonetic symbols used on the site make it 'zarkaraa') also means the following, all in keeping with the "gritty quality" you mentioned Helen...

"1. candied suger;

2. a pebble;

3. gravelly mould;

4. soil abounding in stony fragments;

5. a piece;

6. a potsherd;

7. any hard particle as in <&Jalazarkaraa> a nodule of water;

8. the disease called gravel;

9. golden earth"

What in the world are 7 and 8???





#70346 05/09/03 09:45 PM
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7 Maybe a hailstone?
8 kidney or bladder stone (many small ones)


#70347 05/09/03 10:23 PM
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glad to have you join us for fun below the fold..

these topics are often over looked.. WordWind and i had an almost private conversation about crocadiles, sugar, fabric and cloth.. fun wasn't it? and it makes seersucker so much more interesting!

its nice to know too, so many words from the one root.. and surce (if not sugar) is so close to the sanskrit! isn't it amazing?

can you think of any common words in use to day in any indian languages that seem to have the same root? there are less than a half dozen, (sugar, seersucker, shingle, crocidile...no others that i could find..)but the gritty quality is clear in all of them..


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