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I discovered to my amazement some years ago that a Canadian guy working here in Australia just stared at me blankly when I said a particular task would "take a fortnight to complete". It would thus seem the term (which refers to a two week period) ISN'T in use throughout the English speaking world.
Please let me know where you are in the world and whether "fortnight" is in common usage there.
I was particularly surprised that it was a North American that hadn't heard the word. One only has to think of a military fort and one automatically thinks of North America.
In comparison to the multitude of forts in the USA and Canada, there have only been a couple of well-known forts in Australia - Fort Denison (in Sinny Arba, right in frunna the Oprowse) in particular. Could it be that our paltry few have contributed this term to Australian English??
(I'm guessing that a "fortnight" referred initially to a two-week tour of duty?)
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Hi stales,
Nothing to do with forts, I'm afraid. It's a contraction of "fourteen nights". Merriam-Webster's online dictionary gives this:
Main Entry: fort·night
Pronunciation: 'fOrt-"nIt, 'fort-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fourtenight, alteration of fourtene night, from Old English fEowertyne niht fourteen nights
Date: before 12th century
: a period of 14 days : two weeks
At least one other dictionary has it as "British and Australian". I know from previous discussions on the board that our Kiwi mates also use it. Try using the Search function for the word 'fortnight' (ignoring the thread "Challenge of the Fortnight"). You might like to also search for the much rarer 'sennight' (= seven days, a week) which old (cool) hand tsuwm cast before a stunned readership way back when.
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Marty replied: At least one other dictionary has it as "British and Australian". I know from previous discussions on the board that our Kiwi mates also use it. Try using the Search function for the word 'fortnight' (ignoring the thread "Challenge of the Fortnight"). You might like to also search for the much rarer 'sennight' (= seven days, a week) which old (cool) hand tsuwm cast before a stunned readership way back when.
Marty has it dead right. "Se'ennight' was a term used in a diary by an Otago gold miner in the 1860s, Alphonse Barrington. He used it to describe how long he was stuck in a tent under snow in a particularly inhospitable (and goldless) piece of Godzone. Apart from that I've only seen it used by the authors of historical novels like Georgette Heyer and Susan Howarth. It was (apparently) in use in Britain by the "upper crust" during the early part of the 19th Century (NO, I'M NOT GOING DOWN THAT ROUTE AGAIN!).
Fortnight is just a contraction of "fourteen nights". Your dictionary is probably right about its roots.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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forntnight...Se'ennight
Yep, we definitely use "fortnight" here amongst the dark satanic mills. Never ever heard even a reference to se'ennight(s) though. Why not just say "week"?
I suppose you can have 5 or 6 day working weeks. Is that relevant?
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curious-- i just heard fortnight on TV new this week-- a national broadcast--I thought it strange– its not that most of don't know the meaning of the word–wait let me back track many might be closer. But its never used.
just as we know what you are talking about when you say lift or lorry, but we take our elevators and truck stuff about .
the only time I have seen sennight is in Patterns by Amy Lowell– and I had to look it up! Aside from there, the dictionary I looked it up, I have never seen it in print, anywhere else.
what I like about fortnight and suspect it hold true for sennight, is it can be a fortnight Wednesday–say from December 6 to December 20. Where as a week starts with Sunday. So sennight is seven days–but a week is from Sunday to Sunday? Does that make sense? (Or is it just my personal interpretation?)
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As a life long born here Merkin I have heard the term fortnight, mostly in the phrase "furlongs per fortnight" which is, I believe, meant to indicate that, although the speaker recognizes that units of measure are arbitrary, some just make more sense than others.
N.B. I have never actually heard anything truly being measured in furlongs per fortnight.
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never actually heard anything truly being measured in furlongs per fortnightFunny how you can just know when someone has never walked behind a horse drawn plough... 
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In reply to:
Funny how you can just know when someone has never walked behind a horse drawn plough
Not only am I a full-blooded Merkin but a city boy, to boot. If memory serves, most of the time I have heard the unit furlongs per fortnight used it has been used in reference to the speed of light. There are large pockets of horse drawn plows(sic) not far from where I live these days.
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just a couple of quick comments... sennight - "why not just say "week"?" fortnight - why not just say "two weeks"? (same number of key strokes, same number of sylLAbles) Merkin - http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/merkin.htm (submitted without comment)
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Merkin - http://www.quinion.com/words/articles/merkin.htm (submitted without comment)
I never knew!
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>>>So sennight is seven days-but a week is from Sunday to Sunday?<<<
Helen,
I would use week in both of your examples. I would say that something will occur in a week, or a week from today, meaning in 7 days, or next Thursday. I might also say that something will occur next week, meaning sometime in the period that will start Sunday and end the following Saturday. I might also mean the period starting Monday and ending Friday, but in that case it would be obvious that I mean business days from the context.
I agree that most Americans probably know that fortnight means 2 weeks (or they at least understand that it means something between a week and a month), but I can't think of a single time that someone has used fortnight in casual conversation with me.
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FishonaBike mused Yep, we definitely use "fortnight" here amongst the dark satanic mills. Never ever heard even a reference to se'ennight(s) though. Why not just say "week"?
I suppose you can have 5 or 6 day working weeks. Is that relevant?
You're assuming that the use of both fortnight and sennight were "designed". Like all such terms, my bet is that they just grew into usage. Fortnight just means "any fourteen-day period but let's not be either too exact about the number of days or assume that it begins on any particular day". Sennight was probably used in the same context. I assume its use died out when "week" - one syllable shorter - became more popular.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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fortnight - why not just say "two weeks"? (same number of key strokes, same number of sylLAbles)
Actually, when using one of these terms in conversation one would need to say "a fortnight" as opposed to "two weeks", which doesn't require an article, therefore making it one syllable shorter.
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>Where as a week starts with Sunday. So sennight is seven days–but a week is from Sunday to Sunday?
Helen,
I agree in general with xara's response to your post, except for the bit about "next week" meaning Sunday to Saturday, similar to your definition above.
I am surprised that anyone still thinks about Sunday as being the start of the week - I thought it was an antiquated thing, presumably springing from the Christian religion and the importance of going to church on that day. For me, Monday is clearly the start of a new week. Sunday can't possibly be, as it is part of the "weekend".
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Marty,
It all has to do with calendars. On 99% (if not more) of our calendars the first day of the week is printed up as Sunday. You really cannot use the weekend argument though since things can have two ends – a front-end and a back-end. You never, for example, say a piece of string has a beginning and an end, just two ends.
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In reply to:
It all has to do with calendars. On 99% (if not more) of our calendars the first day of the week is printed up as Sunday. You really cannot use the weekend argument though since things can have two ends – a front-end and a back-end. You never, for example, say a piece of string has a beginning and an end, just two ends.
bel,
You probably wrote that tongue-in-cheek, but I'll bite anyway.
You can't extrapolate the concept of ends from objects to time. Surely you wouldn't say that January was at the end of the year (or one of the two ends), or that the first is an/the end of the month, or dawn is an/the end of the day!
Oh, and I haven't used a calendar for years. Is there still a market for them?
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to do with calendars...
Agree, Marty. Besides, in business diaries of most kinds, surely the two (Western) weekend days are frequently marked as minor spaces, with the week perforce starting on Monday?
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In reply to:
On 99% (if not more) of our calendars the first day of the week is printed up as Sunday.
This is certainly true on almost all of the wall calendars here in the USA that show a month at a time. Frequently business oriented one day per sheet calendars will lump Saturday and Sunday together on one sheet but they show no preference whatsoever for start, end or any specific time during the week unless they have day names in German (Wednesday is Mitwoch, mid-week). When I was in Russia several many years back in January I picked up a calendar in Russian. They have Monday as the first day of the week and I found the calendar almost impossible to use because of that. I still think of Monday as the beginning of the week. Is this a contradiction?
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>>>I am surprised that anyone still thinks about Sunday as being the start of the week<<<
Certainly it has quite a bit to do with the calendar. Sunday is always the first day, unless, as mentioned, the calendar lumps the 'weekend' into one section. Sunday being the start and Saturday the end appeals to me for another reason as well. Wednesday is the middle of the week. If Sunday were last then the week would be very unbalanced.
In addition, in every job I've ever had, the pay period either ended on Friday or Saturday. My most recent job ended its pay period on Saturday, so the week definitely began on Sunday. In previous jobs where the pay period ended on Friday, one could say that the week began on Saturday.
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Maybe this is just because I'm still in school, I doubt it, but I've always thought of Monday-Friday and Saturday-Sunday as two different sections of the week. That's probably why one is called the week and the other the weekend. Friday for me always feels like the end of the week and the weekend is somewhat of a latent period until the beginning of a new week on Monday. Not that I don't do anything on the weekend, but it's a different routine.
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Fortnight is not in common use in my part of Canada, although it is not unknown. It's probably heard more on the west coast where brits are concentrated (guaranteed fortnight after fortnight of steady rain there).
Carpe whatever
Carpe whatever
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Solrep hedged: Carpe whatever
Well, for this post perhaps it should have been:
carpe dies quatuordecim (Latin for "fortnight" ....)
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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A thing that always struck me as funny is the French expression corresponding to "a fortnight", namely quinze jours, literally, 15 days. There is also une quinzaine but no quatorzaine.
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wsieber noted: French expression corresponding to "a fortnight", namely quinze jours, literally, 15 days
... and just when have the French conformed on any other topic? They were probably just miffed that everyone had stolen the idea of fourteen days = fortnight.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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... and just when have the French conformed on any other topic? Very true – le President will be marching in step, even if the rest of NATO is somehow not hearing the same drum  But the new version of the official dictionary, just issued and yours for FF450, does at least now accept hamburgers , jogging , le flash-back , le jackpot , and les girls as legally permissible parts of the recognised French language. And this is no joke – the country that, after all, gave the English-speaking world the phrase bureaucracy , has a ‘police’ based within the Ministry of Culture. This force uses the dictionary to attempt to enforce France’s strict laws against the use of foreign terms within schools, all official documentation, advertising and public notices. The difference such a narrowly prescriptive methodology makes is quite illuminating. New termes argotiques only just admitted to official recognition include such incandescent buzz words as ‘dope’ and ‘joint’! Is this not reminiscent of King Canute getting his feet wet (even if 40 years after the tide rolled in)?  The history and rationale (sounds like a good French word) of the French Academy’s approach is roughly this: “Au secours: la défense de la langue française! Jugeant que la concurrence de l’anglais, même dans la vie courante, représentait une réelle menace pour le français et que les importations anglo-américaines dans notre lexique devenaient trop massives, les autorités gouvernementales ont été amenées, depuis une trentaine d’années, à compléter le dispositif traditionnel de régulation de la langue. À partir de 1972, des commissions ministérielles de terminologie et de néologie sont constituées. Elles s’emploient à indiquer, parfois même à créer, les termes français qu’il convient d’employer pour éviter tel ou tel mot étranger, ou encore pour désigner une nouvelle notion ou un nouvel objet encore innommés. Ces termes s’imposent alors à l’administration. On ne dit plus tie-break mais jeu décisif, baladeur remplace walkman, logiciel se substitue à software, etc….” If you want to see more, chercher la toile, mes amis! http://www.academie-francaise.fr/dictionnaire/index.html
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In reply to:
Is this not reminiscent of King Canute getting his feet wet?
Has anybody else ever read the following favourable interpretation of Knut's actions? I read somewhere that the whole trip to the seaside was in order to teach his sycophantic courtiers a lesson - stop sucking up so hard, I am but a man, that sort of thing.
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Mav said, inter alia: And this is no joke – the country that, after all, gave the English-speaking world the phrase bureaucracy , has a ‘police’ based within the Ministry of Culture.
ah...l'academie francaise (hope the spelling is right). I remember hearing a Frenchman with a good sense of humour and grasp of English pillorying them and their attempts to enforce linguistic "purity". He was at pains to point out that if you removed all the foreign influences from the language, not only would there be no language, but there wouldn't even be anything to drink!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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the very first time i heard of king canute was when a scholar was debunking the common myth, and explaining the that canute was wise and etc.., It was on TV, definately, i think a BBC show that was re-broadcast here... maybe the story of english thing they did? it was well over 10 years ago.
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Has anybody else ever read the following favourable interpretation of Knut's actions? ...the whole trip to
the seaside was in order to teach his sycophantic courtiers a lesson - stop sucking up so hard...
The way I got it stuck in my tiny little brain is that that is just what we learned in primary school. But then I remember getting shot down by a teacher for claiming that a kookaburra was a bird!
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Yes, I've heard this debunking as well. Doesn't really affect the image for me, though - it's still that of a man getting his feet wetted by a greater force (whatever his apparent motivation!)
Rhubarb, I know this is not your period - but can you help?
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As far as I am aware:
1. King Knut was defintiely one of the better. His mal-reputation is primarily a nationalistic thingy because of his not being 'native' English (whatever that is).
2. The original, and full, form of the story is that his courtiers told him he was so powerful even the elements obeyed him, and he, wiser than they, proved that this was not the case, by setting his throne by the shoreline and commanding the tide not to wet his feet. But it did. One in the eye for the sycophants.
3. The story is almost definitely apocryphal, somewhat like Alfred and the cakes.
cheer
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In reply to:
Yes, I've heard this debunking as well. Doesn't really affect the image for me, though - it's still that of a man getting his feet wetted by a greater force (whatever his apparent motivation!)
Rhubarb, I know this is not your period - but can you help?
Yes, sure - I'll jump back a thousand years from the time I virtually live in to help a friend.
The story is well documented, of KC using the implacability of the incoming tide to show his courtiers that he was but a man - if a dam' good one - and a Dane. He was not a God, but a servant of the God (or Gods - there was still afair amount of pantheism floating around in those days.) Just where it is documented, I'm not sure. Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, perhaps?
However, shanks may well be right about the apocryphal nature of the story.
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KC using the implacability of the incoming tide “That’s the way, uh, huh, uh, huh, I like it, I like it..” Thanks, Rhu.
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However, shanks may well be right about the apocryphal nature of the story.
I was always taught the story with that caveat, in fact I was taught to assume that it was apocryphal.
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sputter, sputter, gag, gag...and me not having time to read all the posts in the last two days...this is one I really would have liked to get to.
You are right CapK. I have never, understood the quinze jours description of a fortnight. It is usually said by someone going on vacation/holiday and is vraiment stupide. I am glad it is going out of style here.
As to l'Académie Française. Good grief, they should come over here to learn a thing or two about keeping your language intact. Our government has often INVENTED words to keep from using an English one. The most notable being the translation of hamburger as hambourgeois. It meant absolutely nothing and is disregarded by EVERYONE - even the fanatical French separatists. The only time you ever see this term on a menu is right after the Language Police (yes we really do have those) have passed and threatened a restaurateur. The owner complies on one menu and changes it back on future printings.
There are scads of examples like this and it only ridicules their motives, which are basically not bad. There is even a hotline set up by the government to give the ‘accepted’ names for everything. Argh – it drives me plain crazy!!!!!
Deep breaths, deep breaths, calming down, deep breaths. Sorry folks. It just annoys the piss right outta me.
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bel blared: There are scads of examples like this and it only ridicules their motives, which are basically not bad. There is even a hotline set up by the government to give the ‘accepted’ names for everything. Argh – it drives me plain crazy!!!!!
Bel, I sympathise, I really do. In the interests of political and cultural correctness, there was an effort in New Zealand a few years ago to change the place names given by us colonial types back to the original names used by the Maori (who, I'm sure, my colleague Max will refer to as tangata whenua).
I don't know so much about other areas, but I come from Otago (Otakou in Maori). Otakou is also the name of a town on the Otago Peninsula. LINZ (or whoever) came up with lists of Maori-equivalent names and printed them on maps and published them and used all sorts of approaches to gain acceptance.
However, even the local tribe, the Ngai Tahu, most of whom are as white as I am through 1.5 centuries of intermarriage, failed to use them. So there we are, two names for lots of places, but only the existing one being used ...
Things move on. Turning the clock back never really works.
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in fact I was taught to assume that it was apocryphal.
Personally, Max, I treat all history as apocryphal, and shall continue to do so until I am able to purchase Dr Who's Tardis. (Iwonder if I'll have to enable the cookies on that as well - a scary prospect if I use it to check on King Alf - epecially if I find that the story isn't apocryphal.) 
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I have never, understood the quinze jours description of a fortnight. It is usually said by someone going on vacation/holiday and is vraiment stupide.
Sacre bleu! Ce n'est pas stupide, tout alors.
Consider.
A fortnight is fourteen nights, yes?
A night stretches, more or less, from sunset to dawn (or from when you go to bed 'til the time you get up - a slightly more dodgy proposition for this argument)
Normally speaking, therefore, night starts on one day and ends on the morrow.
Therefore there are fifteen DAYS involved.
Hence quinze JOURS.
Q.E.D.
Whatever else, the French are inexorably logical.
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French are inexorably logicalTrue. They figured "keep out the British mad cow disease, and feed our own cattle on the same shite..."
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Rhub said: Whatever else, the French are inexorably logical.
Stupid, but logical. Yup.
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In reply to:
fortnight = quinze jours
I occurs to me that a simpler explanation is that the French were using the ancient counting method (the Greek & Roman method, among others) whereby you counted both ends of a series. I always had a problem in Sunday School with the assertion that Christ rose from the dead on the third day [after he died]; couldn't figure how you got 3 days from p.m. Friday to early a.m. Sunday. The answer is that in ancient times they counted Friday (1), Saturday (2), Sunday (3). Hence Monday Jan 1 to Mon. Jan 15 is Jan 1 (1), Jan 2 (2) ... Jan 15 (15). Tout simple, n'est-ce pas?
While I'm at it, I trust everyone is aware that fortnight is pronounced fortnit. Also, for those of you who have never seen sennight in print, it's found is one of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories (I forget offhand which one). Stout, and his creation, Wolfe, would have been ecstatic over this site.
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>While I'm at it, I trust everyone is aware that fortnight is pronounced fortnit.
Just a clarification/question to ensure that we don't lead anyone astray here, Bob. I imagine you were concentrating on the syllable emphasis and let the phonetic spelling slip. Do you really pronounce it 'fortnit' or did you mean with a long i -'fortnite' - which is how most people say it here?
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Bobyoungbalt explains: with the assertion that Christ rose from the dead on the third day [after he died]; couldn't figure how you got 3 days from p.m. Friday to early a.m. Sunday. The answer is that in ancient times they counted Friday (1), Saturday (2), Sunday (3).
Yeah, I had to work that one through when I was a kid, and decided they just couldn't count ... they certainly liked to keep you hanging around back in ancient times, didn't they?
Still, I'd like Dr Who's Tardis myself on this one, given someone else's assertion in another thread that all history is myth until proven ...
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No no, Rhu. The term used is quinze jours not quinze nuits/soirs and no matter how you calculate it, it doesn't add up.
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At the risk of being overly pious, if you went back and substituted 'the English' or 'the Americans' or 'the Kiwis' for 'the French' in posts in this thread, AWAD would by now be in civil war.
We're all here because we're wordies. We happen to be wordies who are (mostly) native speaker of the world's dominant language. We complain (loads of us, including me!) about misuse of our language. Why are we being so mean about French people who care about their language?
BTW I do not agree with the way the Academie go about things and I think they are misguided, but I sympathise with the simple fact that they care about language.
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I agree Bridget. I am very interested in the fact that some people, in many different cultures, try to alter langauge by decree whilst other accept it as a living creature. I am not comfortable about generalised insults being offered to any people(s!). My interest is probably sharpened in that, like some others on this board I live in a bilingual, indeed bicultural, corner of the globe.
Participating in this forum has underlined for me that what we share is infinitely more important that what divides us; but that divisions can highlight fascinating differences of formative experience and just plain differences of taste.
Let's try and avoid generalised insults.
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Okay, I'll be specific. (1) The homme manning the "information" desk at the railway station near Charles de Gaulle airport. (2) The ticket collector on the train from there to the Gare du Nord. (3) The gendarme who I asked for directions. (4) NOT the couple in the tavern, neither of whom spoke English (unlike the first three), but who tried to be helpful. But they weren't French, so that probably doesn't count ... and that was just the first hour in Paris in 1998. Now, going back to 1974, ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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fortnight qua fortnit
No, Marty, I really did mean short vowel in last (unstressed) syllable. To be accurate, it's not really pronounced as short 'i'; being in the unstressed final syllable, it's actually pronouced more like schwa.
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No, Marty, I really did mean short vowel in last (unstressed) syllable. To be accurate, it's not really pronounced as short 'i'; being in the unstressed final syllable, it's actually pronouced more like schwa.
Sez hu? NZ standard pronunciation is definitely "fortnite", and I have never yet heard anyone pronounce the word in the manner you describe. The pronunciation you describe screams "Sloane Ranger" to me, or perhaps the sort of person who still thinks "u" and "non-u"
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i'm with max-- i don't use the word-- but members of family do, and i did just here it used in past month on US TV, and it was fortnite--fort night and if anything its for(swallow your breath*)t-night but the swallow your breath is a nano second... how would you express that in a pronounciation guide?
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Interesting discussion re: fortnight and se'enight. I have seen both used in the novels by Patrick O'Brien ( a penname) that recount the adventures of Jack Aubrey and his faithful sidekick Stephen Maturin. The reference to furlongs per fortnight is a sendup of the whole nonsense of units of measure.
Which, by the way reminds me to ask how long a rod is, how big is a cubit, and what is a talent of silver weigh?
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>>>Which, by the way reminds me to ask how long a rod is, how big is a cubit, and what is a talent of silver weigh?<<<
one rod is equal to 16.5 feet or 5.03meters. i can't help you with the others, but i'm sure someone here knows, or can find out.
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Just to widen the confusion beyond the French and their language - in Spanish a two-week period is referred to as a quinceno, also based on the number fifteen. So, perhaps there is some divide among Romance and Germanic languages on this one. I can't recall if Italian has a similar construction. Can anyone contribute on other possible languages on this divide?
Another odd note - in Spanish, to say "a week from Thursday," one says "Jueves en ocho" which is basically "8 days from Thursday." Another illustration of this counting difference, perhaps?
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HouseWolf asked Which, by the way reminds me to ask how long a rod is, how big is a cubit, and what is a talent of silver weigh?
Yes, and how much is a lac of silver worth? I remember listening to an British-Indian comedy programme on the radio in Britain a year or so ago. The skits almost always were about arranged marriages and dowries. The dowry was alway measured in lacs, and the skits almost always dissolved into a hilarious discussion of the value of a lac ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Kiwi wrote: Yes, and how much is a lac of silver worth?
Going back to our friends the French, a lac of silver in that language (i.e. a lake) would be worth a LOT. The Indian word is lakh, which means 100,000, and is used to denote quantities of rupees (e.g. 50 lakhs of rupees).
BTW - my first ever use of markup, thanks to the advice in the FAQ and a suggestion from Marty to read it!
p.s. - just found an alternative spellling of this as lac - for the same numerical definition. Can also mean simply a great number: what a lakh (certainly no lack) of wordies on this board!
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Wasn't the length of a cubit adjusted every time the Egyptians got a new Pharoah? From the tip of his "tall man" finger to his elbow. Not a wonder the people hoped the Pharoah would live for ever - they had to change all the maps and plans every time one croaked!!
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Allo Bridget,
I was not attacking French people. I was attacking the notion that they find it better to INVENT words than to accept an English word that is in use be the entire population. Inventing words is not protecting your language at all. In our case it is simply a form of anti-Englishism which I find extreme.
I am French and I love my language. I love my people. But I don`t think this method is acceptable. It is important to care about one`s language but I do not think we should let people do just anything because they care. If someone is misguided, should they not be alerted to it?
As to my "quinze jours is vraiment stupide" post...well it is. Even friends and family agree that it doesn`t make sense. It is just an expression that has hung around forever.
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>>>in Spanish a two-week period is referred to as a quinceno, also based on the number fifteen<<<
could this be a measure of half a month rather than a two week period? another possibility may be that they count both the beginning thursday and the ending thursday, which would be 8 or 15 days.
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Xara, you are absolutely right, we say in Italian "una quindicina di giorni" and we don't think at weeks, but just have the feeling of "a measure close to half month".
Ciao
Emanuela
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Wasn't the length of a cubit adjusted every time the Egyptians got a new Pharoah?
Right. The cubit varied from place to place and time to time, but it was always defined as the distance from the tip of the middle finger to the elbow. Typically about 18".
Lakh is related etymologically to the lox of bagel with lox. The IE word originally referred to the fish but became applied to other things as the word spread beyond the range of the salmon. Sometimes it was another fish but it also was applied to the color of the salmon and became part of the word lacquer and some large number, e.g., 10,000 from the fish's habit of coming in large groups during the spawning season.
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Huh?
you're pulling our leg, right? – Lacquer is related to Lac– as in shellac– which is a resinous compound made by dissolving some insect*– (fill in a Latin name here) in alcohol. The insects shell dissolves, and you strain out the meaty bits.. and the result is shellac. It is pale amber to red in color... (*thousand of insects..)
Lacquer is shellac that has been fortified with organic compounds– (tree stuff of some sort–fruit? Sap? Crushed leaves?) there is also a process for dissolving the oxide of mercury in lacquer– to make a cinnabar.– wait that's wrong– mercuric oxide is yellow– mercury and sulfur? Mercury and something... (Actually in previous life, I was an alchemist... I am and remain to all who know me 47– but it's a cover story– I didn't learn how to transmute lead into gold, but I did learn the secret of eternal life.. To bad I have outlive the usefulness of my brain!)
Now lakh might well mean thousands... but to salmon and pink? Or to lox... show me how!
Really-- if its true, i want to hear the story of the connection.
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Miz Helen Ledasdottir complains: Now lakh might well mean thousands... but to salmon and pink? Or to lox... show me how! Really-- if its true, i want to hear the story of the connection.AHD ( http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE262.html) doesn't help me past the lox This etymological ramble is rescued from the deep, dark and dank recesses of my memory. I'm thinking maybe Mario Pei's The Story of Language. Quick check of lacquer and shellac shows that the AHD traces the lac element ( http://www.bartleby.com/61/59/L0005900.html) to the Sanskrit. Maybe the IE WordWizards have changed their collective mind since the dark ages of my intro to linguisitics, but it sure sounds good, doesn't it? I got another one involving tapping a desk, pouring a beer and cutting threads in a hole that they seem to have abandoned me on, too.
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Faldage said: ... bagel with lox ...LOX is, of course (and how could you not have made this connection ...?) Liquid OXygen. Used in the space program, amongst lots of other usages. Didn't know you could get it kosher, though.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Whoa! Faldage continues, quoting HOT, whose comments launched a thousand quips: Miz Helen Ledasdottir complains: Now lakh might well mean thousands... but to salmon and pink? Or to lox... show me how! Really-- if its true, i want to hear the story of the connection.If I were inclined to self-recrimination over small slips, I would probably, at this juncture, point out that I originally posted the word lac. I would also point out (if, as I said, I was into mental flagellation), that I didn't bother looking up the spelling first. My understanding of Hindi or any other Indian language is zip. I spelled it as it sounded. O me miseram. Mea maxima culpa. I have since done this, and lakh appears to be the correct spelling.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa--
Okay so Lac--as in shellac and lacquer are related-- but is there any relation of lakh to lox? Maybe--
But a relation of lac as in shellac/lacquer to lakh and then to lox? that doesn't sound kosher-- what with insects and all...
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In reply to:
Which, by the way reminds me to ask how long a rod is, how big is a cubit, and what is a talent of silver weigh?
The weight of a talent varied from place to place. In Euboea and Athens, one talent was equal to 25.86 kg. Elsewhere on the Greek mainland it was 37.8 kg.
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>Okay, I'll be specific. (1) The homme manning the "information" desk at the railway station near Charles de Gaulle airport. (2) The ticket collector on the train from there to the Gare du Nord. (3) The gendarme who I asked for directions. (4) NOT the couple in the tavern, neither of whom spoke English (unlike the first three), but who tried to be helpful. But they weren't French, so that probably doesn't count ... and that was just the first hour in Paris in 1998. Now, going back to 1974, ...< CapK, are you talking about the French, or the Parisians? I'm going to get myself into trouble by denouncing people for using stereotypical generalisations and then doing it myself... ...but actually, when I went back and read them this time, the comments struck me far less strongly. And I thought use of emoticons helped! Hence I put one in above to show that this was not a serious comment about all Parisians! For the record, I didn't ever believe anyone meant to be derogatory, but we started off with a discussion of the shortcomings of language policing and ended up with 'the French are logical, but stupid'. I don't quite know what to make of this, but I noticed it and it's hard to see it as positive.
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Mais si, it adds up! Fifteen days hung around fourteen nights - makes perfect sense.
When you book into a hotel for Saturday night, you can spend two days there - Saturday and Sunday. This is the same thing over a longer time period.
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>The term used is quinze jours not quinze nuits/soirs and no matter how you calculate it, it doesn't add up<
Mais si, it adds up! Fifteen days hung around fourteen nights - makes perfect sense.
When you book into a hotel for Saturday night, you can spend two days there - Saturday and Sunday. This is the same thing over a longer time period.
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Bridget asked: CapK, are you talking about the French, or the Parisians?
Actually my response didn't address the issue. The Parisians I've met are, on the whole, rude. And rudeness was the basis of my response.
When I said "stupid but logical", what I meant was that they use logic to arrive at places that no one else normally does. When they arrive there, they will defend the position to the death, regardless of its value.
In this instance we were discussing French language purity and the fact that the French are like King Knut/Canute was reputed to have been - defenders of the undefendable. You can no more stop change in language than you can the tides. To try to legislate against adoption of words from other languages does two things: It makes you appear elitist, and if even partially successful, isolates your culture. In this day and age, most countries/languages have realised that. The French, as exemplified by their academics and government, haven't. What does that make them - especially when you take all the rest of their little xenophobic quirks into consideration?
Having said all that, I should point out that I was referring to the culture and its effect on individuals, not individuals' thought processes. I think bel realised that.
If Max ever gets his fan club working to his advantage, he'd probably agree with me that one of NZ's worst traits is the "tall poppy syndrome".
If a Kiwi does well at something, sooner or later there will be an attempt by the culture to cut him or her "down to size". I hate that - it's a hangover from the post-depression era. For fifty years mediocrity was a value that the government encouraged. Sameness and underachievement were used to justify the stultifying economic stagnation engendered by the protectionist, closed-loop "nanny government" approach from the 1930s to the early 1980s. The economic approach died with the National Government in 1984, but the cultural influences just keep on truckin'.
Cheers
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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If a Kiwi does well at something, sooner or later there will be an attempt by the culture to cut him or her "down to size". I hate that - it's a hangover from the post-depression era.
Dear Cap ... The Kiwis are not alone in this one. The Hawaiians talk about crabs in a barrell... when one reaches the rim the others pull him back down. Then there's the Irish saying "Put an Irishman on a spit and you'll have no trouble finding two others to turn him." All reflective of the same trait in human nature. Why do we berate instead of boost? Jealousy? Or, dare I say, even (deadly sin) envy?
Then there is the whole phenomena of gossip ....
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'fraid we Brits are vey guilty of this. The moment anyone starts to become successful the knives are out. Sad.
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>use logic to arrive at places ... (and) defend the position to the death.... I-Maginot that!!!
TEd
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TEd mused: >use logic to arrive at places ... (and) defend the position to the death.... I-Maginot that!!!Gedorff! Maginot is a French word meaning "pointless defensive point not defended." It's the exact antonym, not a synonym! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Mais si, it adds up! Fifteen days hung around fourteen nights - makes perfect sense.When you book into a hotel for Saturday night, you can spend two days there - Saturday and Sunday. This is the same thing over a longer time period.
Mais non, Bridget. If you calculate it that way we should really be saying seize jours, not quinze. Write it out on a piece of paper and you will see that I am right.
Typically, most people work from Monday to Friday. When they go on vacation/holiday they start on the Saturday and finish on the Sunday of the second week, as follows...
Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Th, Fr, Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Th, Fr, Sat, Sun.
A total of seize jours, not quinze.
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'fraid we Brits are vey guilty of this. The moment anyone starts to become successful the knives are out...
A famous chef from Paris is touring Wales. He stops at a samll seaside restaurant, and chooses lobster from the menu. The waiter points to a shallow tank, and asks the chef to pick his own. "Sacré bleu! Ow is it possible - if we kept our Paris lobsters in such a shallow tank they would all run to Dieppe!" exclaims the chef. "No problem, here", says the waiter. "They're Welsh lobsters - if one tried to get out, the other bastards would all murder him!"
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Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Th, Fr, Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Th, Fr, Sat, Sun.
A total of seize jours, not quinze.
This can only work if you are talking about the working week, ma belle bel (I would have called you "bon bel" but for the possible offence you might take with ref. to the laughing cow! ) The whole point about the term "fortnight" is that it can be used about a period that starts on any day, related to any activity, as in, "I will see you again a fortnight today." Are you telling me that "quinze jours" can only be used to denote the period between one week-end and another? If so, then you are right and I withdraw with a graceful bow, but I had always believed that the two phrases were equivalent.
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