There's an Icelandic word, gluggaveður, that means "weather that looks really nice through the window when you're snug and warm inside, but would freeze your eyelids off if you actually went out in it".Well, literally it means "window-weather", but that's the more general meaning. Just because the sky is blue and the sun is shining doesn't meant that the weather won't hurt you, especially in Iceland.
The ð is an eth. It's an Icelandic way of making the TH sound, but it seems that the word is usually anglicised as gluggavedur.
Anyway, the word is utterly useless in London at the moment as the weather looks crap and is crap, and the wind has been howling like a bereaved wolf for the last fortnight.
For the rain it raineth every day.
(Which is an example of polyptoton: one word - rain - being used in two different forms, like Arthur O'Shaughnessy's "We are the dreamers of dreams".)
The Inky Fool pops to the shops
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Is 'looks crap and is crap' a polyptoton? Just wundrin.
ReplyDeleteTwo servings of the same crap, I'm afraid, Tim!
ReplyDeleteð (eth) is a voiced fricative, sounding like the "th" in "these".
ReplyDeleteþ (thorn) is an unvoiced fricative, sounding like the "th" in "thistle" (or "thorn").
þ (thorn) is usually anglicised in writing as "th", hence using "d" for ð (eth).
And they say pictures are worth a thousand words. Seems words can be as well... Worth a thousand words.
ReplyDelete