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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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OED has 1597 for the earliest citation of pissabed for dandelion. Dandelion itself is dated back to 1513, not that much earlier.
And, le Trésor de la langue française informatisé gives late 15th century (ca.1483 by another source) for pissenlit in French. That's a gap of almost five and a half centuries between the Norman conquest and 1597. There were a lot of French loanwords coming into English in the 15th and 16th centuries. And pissabed is not a loanword, but may be a loan translation (calque). Because other Romance languages have a similar word (e.g., Spanish meacama) and given its late citation date, I think it's more likely the English probably borrowed and translated it from early modern French. OTOH, dandelion was probably borrowed from Norman or Anglo-Norman.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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stranger
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OP
stranger
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I have found the discussion about dandelions interesting. It has covered a lot of ground, as the plant itself is wont to do !
Thank you for the additional historical background, zmjezhd. I enjoy learning about the changes in the English language, especially after the Norman invasion.
Have we said everything we have to say on this topic? I think maybe we have.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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All that matters I guess. Only on the point of appreciation I'd like to say that the English are best off with their name for this bright flower.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Have we said everything we have to say on this topic?Maybe not. I asked a francophone friend at work yesterday about pissenlit, and he told me about a saying: Bouffer (ou manger) les pissenlits par la racine. ("To eat dandelions by the root.") It means to be dead and buried. I told him that we say "pushing up daisies." There is an online Anglo-Norman Dictionary at the Anglo-Norman Hub site ( link). Searching on the English dandelion, I find two entries: dandelion (?)
squinant, dellion, mastic Pop Med 330.24
dandelion
Dens leonis: g[allice] dent de leon Bot Gloss 119
den[s] leonis [...] G[allice], dent de lion, A[nglice], doleroune Alph 49.7
dente de lyoun Medical Codeswitching 145 is Alphita, a medico-botanical glossary, ed. J. L. G. Mowat, Anecdota Oxoniensia, Med. & Mod. Ser. I, ii, Oxford, 1887, and shorter versions in BM MSS Addit. 15236, ff. 2r-22r, 172v-197v (A), and Sloane 284, ff. 1r-48v (B). (This work is from about 1400, almost the end of the Middle English period. Digitized on Google Books link.) Bot Gloss is T. Hunt, ‘The Botanical Glossaries in MS London BL Add. 15236’, Pluteus 405 (1986-87), 101-150. Pop Med is Tony Hunt, Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England, Cambridge, 1990. Searching on the Middle English word deleroune 'dandelion' (see above), I came across this discussion (in German, link) about the words dandelion and pissenlit. One of the commentators there seems to think that dandelion was never French, but only Anglo-Norman. Though, the discussion is in German, one person has copied the entry for dent-de-lioun from the Dictionary of Middle English, which includes citations not in the OED1 entry. Another entry in this dictionary, under wort, has another Middle English word for dandelion: bitter-wort.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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stranger
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stranger
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Thank you for unearthing more information about the English/French connection [ sorry if that is a groan I sense !] I like the theory of Anglo/Norman for dandelion, and find it interesting to know of the French equivalent to our pushing up daisies. Wort [ lungwort, masterwort for example] means plant in old English, so perhaps this was the pre-Norman name.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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And on a non-word tangent if you pick a dandelion with a longish, thickish stem and lop off the flower and blow in one end you get a - well not a whistle exactly but a musical moo rather like a kazoo. If it doesn't work take a little more off the thin end. You can even nip a little hole part way along for a two note kazoo.
Probably the worst tasting musical instrument there is.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I never considered you capable of lopping of heads  and I'm stil wondering about the name. In German it is called Löwenzahn so lion's tooth. I've been trying to find why among all the other names we have for what we generally call 'horseflower' the lion never comes into picture. Neither can I find why it is called 'horseflower'.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Do the Hollandaises no longer say leeuwetand but paardebloem? How about pisbloem 'pee-flower', varkensbloem 'pig-flower', elkbloem 'moose-flower', konijneblad 'bunny-leaf', ganzetong 'goose-tongue', luusbloem (? 'louse-flower'), kettingbloem 'chain-flower' ( link)? I've no clue why it's called 'horse-bloom' in Dutch. [Addendum: It seems there are more names: Frisian hynsteblom (??), Flemish zeekebedde (? 'sick-a-bed', my Flemish ain't what it ought to be) ( link).]
Last edited by zmjezhd; 04/19/09 07:53 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Ah, I had that same page but overlooked the leeuwentand that came in the end. They may have dropped the tooth as we also have a leeuwen bek (mouth). I'm really glad that someone here speaks fluent Dutch occasionally  .
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I always thought the lion part ought to have come from the golden mane. It does look like a dandy lion's mane.
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