I have moved this up from Aanimal Safari, where is was getting ignored.
its a pretty free wheeling bit of thread, from animals, to sugar, to building, to fabirc to textiles and text, words, and
back to animals..
there are ideas and words that came up.. and could be explored further.. there are some more interesting sugar words,
for example(i can think of at least one.. which extends the meaning of sugar into chemisty!)-- and i wonder if skree,
a loose mountain gravel is related to sarkar.. or kroke.. (the greek) and and shingle. and faber/fabricate/fabric/forge...has possiblities, as does, text,/textile/technic/technical... and we can always continue with gators in Animal Safari.
To compact it a bit header were edited, Of Troy is Blue, Wordwind is Green, and Consuelo is Red --it's easy than it sounds, since WordWind often has a signature (and i never do) also note some bold/italicis in original, have not been restored.
Re: Croc of His and Hers / /Posted on Fri Jun 7 17:22:39 2002
the word crocodile, curiously, is, at it's root, is related to the root word for sugar!
crocodile comes to english, from ME, and L. The ME cocodrille, is from MF, cocodrillus, an alteration of the latin crocodulus, which came from the Greek, krokodilos, (lizard/crocodile) from the greek roots of kroke (shingle, pebble) + drilos, worm.
the kroke of the greek is related to the sanskrit sarkara which also mean pebble(pebbles)
by an other route, sarkara moved to persian as shakar, and then to arabic as sukkar, and then dispersed throught italian and french (it still is surce in french)and into english as sugar!
the pebble meaning has to do with sugar's gritty quality, (very evident if you have ever spilled some!)and the same root shows up again in seersucker, (one of Anu's words with interesting etymologies) seersucker fabic comes from the persian, meaning milk and sugar.
who would have thought, sugar, seersucker, and crocodile, all related words at the root meaning? and are there other words with as much grit!
Re: Croc of His and Hers / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 12:19:17 2002
Seersucker...milk and sugar...what a lovely thought! Now I'll look at those old white-haired Southern gentlemen in their seersucker suits and will think, "You're milk and sugar, old men in seersucker, sitting there nodding your heads in your pews on Sunday mornings...milk and sugar..."
Do you think the crocs were called so because of the bumpy texture of their skin? Gritty?
Thanks, of troy, for this information!
DubDub
Re: Croc of His and Hers / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 13:38:08 2002
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.
Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 15:26:03 2002
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
Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / /Posted on Sat Jun 8 18:49:27 2002
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?
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sat Jun 8 21:22:06 2002
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
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sat Jun 8 21:44:05 2002
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.
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sun Jun 9 11:08:41 2002
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).
Subject Re: Fabirc, of troy's last word / / Posted on Sun Jun 9 11:28:02 2002
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..
