Drumlin is a place name, I think, here but what does it mean over there?
There's a Drumline in County Clare...
... and the reason that I asked whether any words looked wrong in the same way as drumlin is that the first part is of Celtic origin and the second half Germanic. Some people don't like mixed roots.
Drumlin is a place name, I think, here but what does it mean over there?
There's a Drumline in County Clare...
... and the reason that I asked whether any words looked wrong in the same way as drumlin is that the first part is of Celtic origin and the second half Germanic. Some people don't like mixed roots.
Jonathan
Wikipedia disagrees.
A drumlin, from the Irish word droimnín ("littlest ridge"), first recorded in 1833, in the classical sense is an elongated hill in the shape of an inverted spoon or half-buried egg[1][2] formed by glacial ice acting on underlying unconsolidated till or ground moraine. Assemblages of drumlins are referred to as fields or swarms;[3][4] they can create a landscape which is often described as having a 'basket of eggs topography'.[5]
Jdsk wrote: ↑14 Jan 2022, 5:30pm
... and the reason that I asked whether any words looked wrong in the same way as drumlin is that the first part is of Celtic origin and the second half Germanic. Some people don't like mixed roots.
Wikipedia disagrees.
A drumlin, from the Irish word droimnín ("littlest ridge"), first recorded in 1833, in the classical sense is an elongated hill in the shape of an inverted spoon or half-buried egg[1][2] formed by glacial ice acting on underlying unconsolidated till or ground moraine. Assemblages of drumlins are referred to as fields or swarms;[3][4] they can create a landscape which is often described as having a 'basket of eggs topography'.[5]
There is a hill in Gwynedd, in the Carneddau, called Drum. It is a good deal bigger than a drumlin so drumling appeals as a small drum.
In the Skye Cuillin there is a ridge called Druim nan Ramh.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
There is a hill in Gwynedd, in the Carneddau, called Drum. It is a good deal bigger than a drumlin so drumling appeals as a small drum.
In the Skye Cuillin there is a ridge called Druim nan Ramh.
Yes, the first part of drumlin is Celtic.
Mike Sales wrote: ↑14 Jan 2022, 6:45pm
... so drumling appeals as a small drum.
Jdsk wrote: ↑14 Jan 2022, 6:49pm
And that -lin/ -ling suffix is Germanic.
Jonathan
That convinces. As duckling for instance.
Did the geomorphological term come from the impressive Co. Down swarm, I wonder?
As meander came from the Turkish river.
How did -ling come to mate with the celtic drum?
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
meander must be a bit confusing for someone learning our language -- they may say it mean-der or me-and-er ( shouldn't it be her and me ) instead of me-an-der
Cowsham wrote: ↑15 Jan 2022, 2:24pm
meander must be a bit confusing for someone learning our language -- they may say it mean-der or me-and-er ( shouldn't it be her and me ) instead of me-an-der
Makes you think it should be meeander
And how would a learner cope with paradigm if nobody told them?
We could go on for pages about English's non-phonetic structure: how else could we have words like bough, cough, dough, rough - none of which rhyme?
At least it comes as a relief, when trying to learn a foreign language, to find that it is phonetic: once you see a word you know exactly how it's pronounced. Like Spanish (although, trying to decipher a native Spanish-speaker talking rapidly, I reckon some of the preciseness gets dropped...).
It came as a surprise to me when my son (who speaks some Russian) told me that Russian - for all the precision embodied in the Cyrillic alphabet - is not quite a phonetic language.
Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity. Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments... --- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).
Unlike once and twice, thrice is somewhat dated in American and British usage, sometimes used for a comical or intentionally archaic effect... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thrice
'Bonkers' is quite an interesting word. How to get there from any kind of etymological history I can't imagine! Though my Scottish uncle was born in the town of Bonkle (real name!) in the 1950's, a small mining village in Lanarkshire. Perhaps there's a coal connection?