kaberett: Photo of a pile of old leather-bound books. (books)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2017-03-25 10:03 pm

snippets

  1. The English sofa is a loan from Turkish. The Turkish for the English sofa, however, is kanape, as a loan from the French canapé, which has the original meaning of English sofa and, by figurative extension, the meaning of English canapé, because you've got a little piece of bread or pastry or something that looks like a sofa with the topping perched on top of it. ([personal profile] sebastienne conjectured this etymology when I was grumbling about the Turkish last week; they were surprised and delighted to be correct.)
  2. Fox/vixen is the solitary surviving example in modern English of the Germanic feminine suffix -en, -in: Fuchs/Füchsin.
  3. The English/French foyer is rendered, in Swedish orthography, foajé. It is pronounced the way one might reasonably expect foyer to be pronounced. See also: restaurang.

Post a comment in response:

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at [email protected]