Re: Question: Different English names for "picnic cloth"

Dear all,

Thanks for your replies -- though I noticed that "piece of" seemed
extraneous in all the dialects mentioned. I remember in English class back
in primary school it was quite drummed into me that "cloth" was a mass noun
and that to refer to a segment or discrete portion thereof one had to use a
preponed unit!

Although to be honest I never really thought people used blankets
(particularly woollen ones) for picnics, because like Peter mentioned, grass
tends to be wet, and that's true in Singapore where I come from, so blankets
end up showing wet spots where people have sat on them, and leaving wet
spots on people's bums, while wool would collect grass and leaves and soil
and be very hard to wash...

Personally I use straw mats when I go picnicking -- if anyone has seen the
mats in the smaller Thai Buddhist temples that have demarcated fold-lines,
those are the ones I'm talking about -- easy to clean, light to carry, etc.
Great for picnics!

Eugene

On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> In the Midwestern American dialect of my youth it was either simply "a
> cloth" when needed for some unspecified purpose, or "picnic blanket" for any
> sort of cloth spread on the ground for a picnic. A cloth spread on the
> ground for an extended stay at a camping spot (as opposed to a quick
> picnic), however, is a ground cloth (or possibly groundcloth, since I never
> had occasion to write it out or look it up.) A groundcloth, however, is
> usually heavy canvass or a heavy plastic tarp, while a picnic "blanket" can
> be anything from a bed sheet or table cloth to a heavy wool blanket.
>
> --gary
>
>
> --- On Wed, 11/26/08, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
>
> > From: Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
> > Subject: Question: Different English names for "picnic cloth"
> > To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
> > Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 12:54 PM
>  > I was writing when I realised the cumbersome turn of phrase
> > that is the
> > English "piece of cloth", for which I have been
> > looking for a more poetic
> > synonym or periphrasis.
> >
> > Is there a difference between Anglophone countries as to
> > how this unwieldy
> > phrase is rendered, more specifically perhaps "picnic
> > cloth"?
> >
> > Eugene
>

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