Re: Att. Ray -- of snails and slugs

At 3:19 pm +0200 7/6/01, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:
[snip]
>> But according to my French daughter-in-law, her compatriots - just like
>> us
>> anglophones - do distinguish between _limace_ (slugs) and _escargots_
>> (snails).  Interestingly, altho born and brought up almost in the
>> geographical center of the Hexagone, she was unfamiliar with either
>> _limaçon_ or _colimaçon_ which dictionaries gives as alternative words
>> for
>> "snail".  I guess they are either archaic or regional.  Maybe
>> Christophe
>> can shed light on this.
>>
>
>Indeed, "limaçon" I didn't know until I saw it on the list :) , and as for
>"colimaçon", it's not used to refer to snails but to a kind of stairs (the
>ones
>that go up around a central column).
...and according to Harrap's English-French & French-English dictionaries.
_limaçon_ is also used for spiral stairs.  But the meanings for helical
staircase cannot be derived from "slug", but must have arisen from the
shape of a snail's shell; i.e. at one time these words must have been used
to mean snail as well.  Afterall, presumably the gasteropod had been called
something before _escargole_ (later: _escargot_) was borrowed from the Midi
in the 14th century.  But that dictionaries still list the older words
suggests to me that they probably lingered on regionally for some time.

Actually, English dialects retained other words for 'snail', e.g. _dodman_,
_hodmandod_ until, I think, the 19th cent.

>> I get the impression that the Romancelangs generally do have different
>> words for these two sets of land gasteropods; but then I guess that's
>> not a
>> surprise if you eat the one but not the other.
>>
>
>Strangely enough, I love eating "escargots", but the idea of eating slugs
>is not
>that appetitizing. Maybe because in french "limace" has more negative
>connotations than "escargot".
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.

>>
>> Andrew will have to decide whether Brithenig will have two different
>> words
>> as other Romancelangs do or whether it will just keep basically one word
>> as
>> the Brittoniclangs do.  The 'slug' word, at least, should be drived
>> from
>> Latin: li:ma:x, [gen.] li:ma:cis.  Romance snail-words come from
>> various
>> sources, but none from the Classical _coclea_.
>>
>
>Indeed. In French, it's used as a learned borrowing from latin "cochlée",
>which
>refers to the snailshell-like organ in the inner ear.
....just like _cochlea_ in English   :)

Yes, these are learned borrowings, using the post-Classical spelling with
the silent {h} in the Middle, obviously influenced by Greek _kokhlias_  <--
_kokhlos_ = Latin: _murex_ (a marine gasteropod with snail-like shell, from
which Tyrian purple die was obtained).

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".

But the word does not survive to mean "snail" in the Romancelangs.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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