Re: Att. Ray -- of snails and slugs

En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:

>
> Yes, I agree.  While snail-eating is encountered in many places, I've
> never
> come across slug-eating (among humans!).   The ancient Romans, e.g.,
> consumed practically everythings that's edible; they certainly eat
> snails
> and, indeed, had special enclosures (_coclearia_) in which they were
> reared
> and fattened up; but I've never found any reference to their eating
> slugs.
>
Maybe that's because my father used to "hunt" "wild" snails (I have difficulties
to use the word "hunt" or "wild" for snails, but "pick up" sounds to much like
snails are like fruit or flowers :) ) for us to eat (they were marvelously
tasty, nothing like the ones you find in stores or even in restaurants, though
the quality is better lately), but the idea of rearing and fattening snails is
most amusing to me :)) . When I was ten, I caught two snails and kept them for a
school project, but since when the school project was finished winter was
already there, I kept them until the next spring. but they were so cute that we
would never have thought of eating them. In fact, we didn't eat escargots at
Christmas that year like we used to :) .

>
> The Latin _coclea_ was, presumably, an early borrowing via the spoken
> language.  Christophe may be interested to know that both _coclea_ and
> _kokhlias_ were also used to mean "spiral staircase" and aslso, in both
> languages, "an Archmedean water screw".
>
Strange, the water screw doesn't look like a snailshell at all to me...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr