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rafal Offline OP
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Dear All,

Let me be lazy and just copy-paste my letter to awad:

I was sitting in the pub with the two of my friends today and somehow we ended up discussing what is the English name for a tea/coffee cup/mug handle... Only one of us is a native English speaker (not me, I shall add) and he claimed it's simply a tea-cup handle... Having been subscribed to AWAD for the better part of the last decade I find it extremely difficult to believe there is no single word for that in English - and a more elegant one on top of that! We weren't, however, able to find one through a simple internet search.

Any chance you could shed some light on the matter?

Anyone? I'll be extremely grateful, because it's killing me not to know that wink

Cheers,
Rafal

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It's called a handle. The important lesson here is that there need not be a single word for every little thing in English or in any other language. Is there a single word for it in your native language?

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WELCOME RAFAL ,handle and all.


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you could always use the latin, manubrium, although it has already been taken by the medical profession - medical dictionary laugh


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wink


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In my native language (Polish) we call it "ucho" - ear, because it sort of has the shape of an ear smile

I even once said that in front of the class coz I didn't know it's called handle and my teacher said with smile that she gets the connotation smile

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WELCOME, ELIFIT


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Welcome aBoard, eli!

In my native language (Polish) we call it "ucho" - ear We have a rather old-fashioned saying: "little pitchers have big ears"; for the same reason, I'm sure.

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rafal Offline OP
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Thank you all. I'm a native Polish speaker as well - and indeed we don't have one name for a tea-cup handle. We call it, as elifit pointed out, a tea-cup ear (or just an ear).

I just thought, perhaps unfairly, that 'handle' is not the most elegant English word to use in this context. And also, since English has a loooong history of words borrowed from other languages, I almost expected there to be one even if not of English origin (there is one in Welsh!). So you're right, there's a lesson in it for me...

Best,
Rafal

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ear

There is a proverb in English (and many other languages no doubt) that "little pitchers have big ears". Cup handle is what it's called. I recently dropped a cup and broke its handle. Calling it ear, you might be understood, but calling it handle there's no risk of being misunderstood. The {y} in Polish (and some other Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet, is a high central unrounded vowel (link). It is written in Cyrllic (for Russian anyway) as {ы}.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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