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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Might ploughs have developed from sleds? | | The current word plough also comes from Germanic, but it appears relatively late (it is absent from Gothic), and is thought to be a loanword from one of the north Italic languages". The origins of the word seem rather mystifying. |
Mystifying? Plough = plow = flow and, as above, flow =
...flow... deluge... rinse, wash... flow, float... navigate, swim... overflow... pour... wash... swim, go by sea... rain... flow, navigate... pour out... rinse
Ploughs and flowing water... I wonder whether the plough was first used for irrigation.
If not the time to irrigate, does the position of the Wain tell the Churls when to expect the rains, or snow? Or -- which may amount to the same thing -- when bears go into hibernation?
Does the bear's tail down indicate a 'negative' phase, perhaps when the ponds freeze over (and there are no fish to be had)?
("But bears don't have long tails." "Of course not: it got stuck in the frozen pond!")
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Plough = plow = flow = Ladle? -- as in, the big dipper?
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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Some comments about this thread. They may help stop people from going off in random directions.
| In a passage from The Odyssey quoted in [Jacob?] Wilkens, Ursa Major is also called the Wain. / "That's interesting," I said to myself, "since I reckon that wain, wagon, way, wake... are all the same word and Viking = waking. Now, cutting a wake is exactly what a plough does, so the constellation has been known as The Plough at least since Homer's time. |
Wain = wagon = way: okay. But 'wake'? Not recorded in English before 1540s, apparently same as M.L.G. or M.Du. wake 'hole in the ice,' (etymonline).
'Viking': I'm not convinced of the relationship; I think there are better etymologies from ON vikingr, which usually is explained as "one who came from the fjords," from vik "creek, inlet" (compare the second element in Reykjavik). But it's a minor point in this context.
'Wain' = wagon, not plough. And Homer didn't call Ursa Major "the Plough":
See http://www.constellationsofwords.com/Constellations/UrsaMajor.html
Homer used three names for Ursa Major:
-- Elikopes, 'rolling-eyed' (or 'flashing-eyed');
-- Amaxa, the Wagon;
-- Arktos, the Bear;
The Irish called it Sugi, the Wagon; the Romans called it "Teriones, the Threshing-oxen, walking around the threshing-floor of the pole."
The crux of this is the legendary association of Arthur and Charlemagne.
{This is a new one on me.} Others say it's "churl's wain" {same thing, really}. What does Charlemagne have to do with
a) Arthur
b) a wagon or cart
c) a plough? |
'Charles' Wagon' isn't 'Charles' Plough'.
'Charlemagne' is equated to 'Arthur' because both were great heroes whose names became attached to natural phenomena (e.g., Arthur's Seat). The same hero legends spread through Europe; so, 'According to popular tradition, [Finn MacCumhal] and his great companions lie sleeping in an enchanted cave whence they shall arise in the hour of their country's need, like Arthur, Barbarossa, and Charlemagne.' (Spence, Encyclopaedia of Occultism and Parapsychology).
| Arthur is also known as "The Fisher King." Does that relate somehow? |
| the idea of Charlemagne (or King Arthur) being associated with a cart is pretty laughable anyway. What next? Suleiman's Needle-and-Thread? Pope Gregory's toilet-pan? King Charles' spaniel? |
Arthur's Seat. Arthur's Stone. Arthur's Dyke. Cleopatra's Needle?
Ursa Major was the 'wagon pole' in 'Old English', and so possibly in the 'original English' of the time. "Wain" was a mediaeval name for the constellation; "plough" came much, much later. After Arthur's name had become plastered all over the British landscape, the sky was the next place. 'See them stars, son? That's the Wain, that is.' 'Whose wain, Daddy?' 'Why, bless you, King Arthur's, of course!
--
| So now we can see what plough means. And it's still the same as wain. / Ploughs and flowing water... / Plough = plow = flow |
Eh? No definition for 'wain' has been given, and etymonline doesn't actually offer any meaning for 'plough'. Note further in the etymonline definition (not quoted so far): 'As a name for the Big Dipper, [plough] is recorded from 1510s.' But under the entry for Charles's Wain, use of "plough" is dated from the 1590s; compare constellationsofwords, 'Fale, in 1593, described it as called 'of countrymen the plough,' the first instance in print that I have found.' Either way, not a very ancient tradition in English.
Turning to definition; from the New Shorter OED:
plough. 'An agricultural implement with a cutting blade fixed in a frame drawn by a tractor or by draught animals, used to prepare the soil for sowing or planting by cutting furrows in it and turning it up.'
wain. '= WAGON.' Not a plough, then.
Re plovus/plovum: Livy says it comes from the Rhaetians, a people he says were of Etruscan origin. If true, the resemblance to 'plow' is coincidental. In any case, 'plow' (the form that makes the connection to "pluv-") is an Americanised spelling reflecting the fact that the '-gh' of 'plough' is not pronounced in modern English; but it certainly is in (for example) German Pflug, Dutch ploeg, and Lithuanian plugas. Therefore the resemblance to Latin pluvere, 'to rain', is probably also coincidental; note that the cognates in English, etc., all begin with f (Dutch v- is pronounced f-), same as father is cognate with Latin pater and fee with Latin pecus.
even though bears do not have long tails.
Something dead fishy going on here. |
'Jupiter, fearing to come too nigh unto her teeth, lay hold on her tail, and thereby drew her up into the heaven; so that she of herself being very weighty, and the distance from the earth to the heavens very great, there was great likelihood that her tail must stretch.' (Thomas Hood)
| The current word plough also comes from Germanic, but it appears relatively late (it is absent from Gothic), and is thought to be a loanword from one of the north Italic languages |
| Plough = plow = flow = Ladle? -- as in, the big dipper? |
Have you seen the shape of the 'Big Dipper'?
But again, a very late tradition. See etymonline: 'As a ladle or long-handled utensil for drawing liquid, from 1783, chiefly Amer.Eng. As the popular U.S. name for the asterism known in Britain as The Plough or Charles' Wain, attested by 1833'.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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An after-thought: Why is "plough" recorded so late in English (or any other language, 'sfaras I know) as a name for Ursa Major? Could be because earlier ploughs looked nothing like the constellation, whereas wagons did and do.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Some comments about this thread. They may help stop people from going off in random directions. |
Ah-hah! The world of Applied Epistemology in a nutshell.
What's wrong with exploring random directions to see what turns up? Academia has mechanisms to constrain the pursuit of knowledge and, hence, perpetuates whatever tissue of nonsense has crept into its world-view. It can not distinguish a tissue of nonsense from a wonderful insight -- all paradigms are assumed true -- and it doesn't employ any independent assessment of its own workings.
A branch of Orthodoxy like to call itself skeptical, but they're really just reactionaries. How can you be skeptical without trying to find what fruit may be hanging by the side of another path?
| In a passage from The Odyssey quoted in [Jacob?] Wilkens, |
No, Iman Wilkens, Dutch author of Where Troy Once Stood: which was in East Anglia. Some of our number cleave to this theory whole-heartedly. Most of us, I think, are at least intrigued and willing to entertain the notion.
| Wain = wagon = way: okay. But “wake”? |
G = K. I was saying wagon/wake and flow/plough hang together in a conceptual lump, which contributes to the claim that wake and wagon may be cognate.
You didn't see it that way. So what are we to do? I reckon your objection is no more valid than my claim, so we should just let it ride until something comes along to tip the balance.
But don't be fooled by the learned writers of etymonline and the rest: they have no gift that makes them better at this than anyone else. We can all look around and spot connections: some are universally agreed; some need justification; some are disputed and end up denoted as "origin unknown" -- often as not with both sides saying "I bloody well know, but can't convince those dunderheads", I shouldn't wonder. Explicit accounts of the derivation of words by the people coining them are both rare and uninteresting.
An example (of predictive success): I was thinking about Cancer/crab/karkinos and found that the kraken, usually depicted as octopus-or-squid-like, is described as part crab. OK, I thought, if there are kark- and krak- words associated with crabs, then I bet there are karak- words not too far away. First into my hear was coracle, a carapace-shaped boat: not too much of a stretch of the imagination when you consider Cancer has been somewhat variable, but always associated with the sea. Currach/curragh/corrack and carrack are boats. Caracole is a spiral shell. Korax/coracoid is to do with ravens/crows: perhaps the beak is likened to the claw. (But, kara means black and Cancer/Karkinos "was often considered the 'Dark Sign', quaintly described as black and without eyes".) Carapace is of "unknown origin". Carceral/incarceration/carcer means prison: a reference to pincer-like shackles, I expect.
Ignoring the vowels as irrelevant, we're looking at krk and circle could well be the hub of all these associations.
There is an element of speculation here, but not so much that it could be rejected out of hand by an appeal to the authorities who have the same modus operandi.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Not recorded in English before 1540s |
Surprisingly late. What were wakes called before that?
| “Viking”: I'm not convinced of the relationship; I think there are better etymologies from ON vikingr, which usually is explained as "one who came from the fjords," from vik "creek, inlet". But it's a minor point in this context. |
But in the context of assessing, valuing and using etymologies (and academic sources generally), it is a central point.
Having drawn a parallel with cutting/flowing/ploughing, we might just as well say wik comes from the same root as vikingr. Would they have described themselves as coming from the fjords? (Why not a name related to "fjord"?) Would anyone else know or care enough to call them that? What about the Danes?
wake: Prob. f. MLG wake f. ON vaka, vok hole or opening in ice, perh. orig. as made by a vessel (whence also Du. wak, G Wake hole or channel in ice).
Notice the "perhaps". We're still talking about cutting channels though... much as a Norse/Viking skiier/skater would. {Note that medieval nordic skiing used one ski, leaving one continuous wake.}
| “Wain” = wagon, not plough. And Homer didn't call Ursa Major "the Plough" |
I said the Wain has been known as the Plough at least since Homer's time in the sense that plough and wain have a shared meaning.
You can't go (just) by what the dictionary says: it was written by people who believe English is a recent invention.
| “Charles’ Wagon” isn't “Charles’ Plough”. |
But it might be. That was the point of asking. It's not good enough to say a wagon is not the same thing as a plough. We're talking about words with a fathomless history: putting English and the notions wrapped up in it on the same footing as Latin, Greek, Aramaic... If we don't assume English did not exist in the "Age of Myth-Making", what happens...?
| What does Charlemagne have to do with a) Arthur...? |
| I have read elsewhere that some scholars believe Arthur to be a mythologized Charlemagne. |
The same hero legends spread through Europe; so, “According to popular tradition, [Finn MacCumhal] and his great companions lie sleeping in an enchanted cave whence they shall arise in the hour of their country’s need, like Arthur, Barbarossa, and Charlemagne.” |
Thanks. And if nothing further comes of this... we just leave it parked here until it does.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| So now we can see what plough means. And it's still the same as wain. / Ploughs and flowing water... / Plough = plow = flow |
Eh? No definition for “wain” has been given |
Yes it was : "I reckon that wain, wagon, way, wake... are all the same word".
| and etymonline doesn't actually offer any meaning for “plough”. |
That's why I offered up two other defintions and said "So now we can see what plough means".
| Either way, ["the Plough" is] not a very ancient tradition in English. |
Maybe so. Hence, very near the beginning: "Alternatively, it really was seen as a wagon or cart and the Plough is a coincidental appellation."
But how long was it called 'of countrymen the plough,' before that was recorded in 1593?
| Re plovus/plovum: Livy says it comes from the Rhaetians, a people he says were of Etruscan origin. If true, the resemblance to “plow” is coincidental. |
Why?
| In any case, “plow” (the form that makes the connection to "pluv-") is an Americanised spelling reflecting the fact that the “-gh” of “plough” is not pronounced in modern English |
Yes. G = U = W, as we would say.
| but it certainly is in (for example) German Pflug, Dutch ploeg, and Lithuanian plugas. |
Indeed. We all use G; we pronounce it differently. How can we tell which is "right"? How can we tell that German, Dutch and Lithuanian are not "led astray" by the spelling, just as English is led astray by the spelling of newt and ski?
| Therefore the resemblance to Latin pluvere, “to rain”, is probably also coincidental |
Oh, let's just forget it then. Never mind that it looks like and means to flow.
And forget what might be a historical insight: that the original ploughs (that did leave a wake unlike a modern furrow-slice) were used to cut irrigation/rain channels.
| note that the cognates in English, etc., all begin with f (Dutch v- is pronounced f-), same as father is cognate with Latin pater and fee with Latin pecus. |
Are you saying that despite the P = F rule, plough is ruled out as a cognate of flow because it doesn't start with F?
| “Jupiter, fearing to come too nigh unto her teeth, lay hold on her tail, and thereby drew her up into the heaven; so that she of herself being very weighty, and the distance from the earth to the heavens very great, there was great likelihood that her tail must stretch.” |
In what way is this any kind of explanation?
See how regurgitating the authorities does not help stop people going off in random directions?
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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| Don wrote: | | • Amaxa, the Wagon; |
Interesting.
A couple of possible ways to connect Amaxa to plough, might be via axe or even oxen.
Amaxa might simply have meant "drawn by oxen" which could have applied to a wagon or a plough.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Chad wrote: | A couple of possible ways to connect Amaxa to plough, might be via axe or even oxen.
Amaxa might simply have meant "drawn by oxen" which could have applied to a wagon or a plough. |
Interesting. Apollo's cattle of the sun come to mind. Surely furrows aren't designed to lie any old way? (fields were allotted as fairly as possible we're always told)
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| DPCrisp wrote: | | No, Iman Wilkens, Dutch author of Where Troy Once Stood: which was in East Anglia. Some of our number cleave to this theory whole-heartedly. Most of us, I think, are at least intrigued and willing to entertain the notion. |
While some of us suspect the story is a fiction, written by someone who lived in East Anglia.
| Home of Cambridge University, East Anglia has also been home to some of the world’s great minds - John Milton, Sir Isaac Newton, Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson. Find inspiration walking in the footsteps of so many greats, and maybe even dream up story of your own about the people who might have lived in one of the sprawling Manor estates that dot the countryside. | |
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Chad wrote: | | Amaxa might simply have meant "drawn by oxen" which could have applied to a wagon or a plough. |
Sounds like annex. To attach something.
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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The etymological connection between Amaxa and wagon would be via axle (I assume) but axle also keeps cropping up in relation to shoulder… axillary: appertaining to the upper arm and shoulder
Now doesn’t that remind you of a plough shear?... (Not to mention the asterism in question.)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I doubt if it is related, but it is attached. An extract from our new book.
| In anatomy the rhomboid muscle is the one connecting the shoulder blade to the vertebrae of the spinal column. But who is getting inspiration from whom: the Palladium, a sacred statue of Ancient Greece that possessed great protective powers, was made from the shoulder-blade of Pelops and in Greek mythology Pelops was killed by his father, served up in a banquet at which his left shoulder was eaten, then resurrected and given a replacement shoulder-blade of ivory made by Hephaestus the smith. | |
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Chad
In: Ramsbottom
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| Donmillion wrote: | | An after-thought: Why is "plough" recorded so late in English (or any other language, 'sfaras I know) as a name for Ursa Major? Could be because earlier ploughs looked nothing like the constellation... |
You don't think so?... Not sure I’d agree.
This one from ancient China bears a passing resemblance:
And this one from ancient Greece, even more so:
(Though I must confess, as a regular contributor to the RSPCA I’m not happy with the way it’s attached to that poor oxen!)
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Chad wrote: |
Now doesn’t that remind you of a plough shear?... (Not to mention the constellation in question.) |
It looks even more like an axe.
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