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Werewolf Words

Halloween is just around the corner, and you know what that means: overpriced costumes and too much candy. But let’s not forget what it also means: scary stuff! And that’s what we’ll be featuring at Wordnik all month, starting this week with a howler of a theme: werewolf words.

Werewolf comes from the Old English werewulf, with wer meaning “man,” and wulf meaning “wolf.” The Virtual Linguist has an excellent post about the two Old English words for man, were and wapman. While wapman gave us man, “the only vestige of [were] in modern English is the word werewolf.”

Now, were is used to indicate any shapeshifting animal. There’s the weretiger, “a creature of Southeast Asian myth,” and in African myth and folklore, the werehyena. In various myths, fictions, and games, there’s the wererat, the werebear (not to be confused with these bears), the werepanther, and more.

The werewolf is also known as a wolfman and a loup-garou. Loup-garou is French in origin and translates as “wolf man-wolf,” with loup meaning “wolf,” and garou meaning “man-wolf.” The Online Etymology Dictionary explains:

The garou (O.Fr. garoul) is cognate with the garulph, gerulphos in Norman versions of the word, which breaks down to gar/war/wer “man” and ulph/wlf “wolf.” It seems to have been an attempt to wrestle O.H.G. *werawolf or its Frankish equivalent into the Gallic/Romanic sound system of the French tongue. But the French now use garou to mean any kind of were-transformation: chien-garou (changing into a dog) chat-garou, etc.

Loup-garou is a pleonasm, “a phrase in which one or more words are redundant as their meaning is expressed elsewhere in the phrase.”

The rougarou is “a variant pronunciation and spelling” of loup-garou, and “most often is described as a creature with a human body and the head of a wolf or dog.” By the way, cynocephaly is “the state of a human having the head of a dog.”

Moonstruck

Another word for werewolf is lycanthrope, which comes from the Greek lykos, “wolf,” plus anthropos, “man.” (In the Underworld film series, Lycans are a race of humans that can transform into “bipedal, humanoid wolf-like creatures.”) Lycanthropy also refers to the delusion that one can change himself into a wolf.

Other similar delusions include zoanthropy (contains the Greek zoion, “animal”), “in which a person believes himself to be one of the lower animals”; cynanthropy (kyon, Greek for “dog”), “in which the afflicted person imagines himself to be a dog, and imitates its voice and actions”; and boanthropy, “in which the victim imagines himself to be an ox,” with boan from the Greek bos, “cow.”

Werewolf syndrome is also known as hypertrichosis, “an abnormally large development of hair either locally or generally over the body.” Hypertrichosis is made up of Greek parts: hyper means “over, beyond, overmuch, above measure”; trikhos means “hair”; and osis, “state of disease.” It differs from hirsutism, which is “excessive and increased hair growth in women in locations where the occurrence of terminal hair normally is minimal or absent.” In the 19th and early 20th centuries, sideshow performers such as Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy and Lionel the Lion-Faced Man were most likely afflicted by hypertrichosis.

While a full moon is supposed to be the werewolf catalyst, a silver bullet is supposed to be the only kind of weapon that can bring a werewolf down. The term now also refers to “any straightforward solution perceived to have great effectiveness or bring miraculous results.” For more on the silver bullet metaphor, check out this Language Log post from Mark Liberman, and for all things silver, look here.

Therianthrope refers to “any mythical being which is part human, part animal,” and comes from the Greek therion, “beast,” plus anthropos, “man.” Turnskin is an obsolete term meaning “someone who can change their skin at will, especially into that of a wolf,” and is a direct translation of the Latin versipellis, itself from vertere, “to turn,” and pellis, “skin.”

In Native American legends, shapeshifters are known as skinwalkers, implying walking around in someone else’s skin. In Scottish and Irish legend and folklore, the selkie is “a seal which can magically transform into a human.” The kitsune is “a Japanese fox spirit, normally female, said to have powers such as shape-shifting.” Loki is the Norse god of mischief and trickery, and was said to have shapeshifting abilities. And we can’t forget the animagus, “a wizard who elects to turn into an animal,” as opposed to a werewolf, which,  as Hermione Granger reminds us, “has no choice in the matter.”

For even more shapeshifters, check out this list, and this one for more dogs in myth. You’ll like this list for words on transformation, and this one, this one, and this one for words about the moon. Finally, Arnold Zwicky compares three diffferent translations for Der Werewolf, a German poem.

Remember, we’re all things werewolf this week at Wordnik. As for next week, we have just one word.

[Photo: German woodcut 1722, Public Domain]
[Photo: “Moonstruck,” CC BY 2.0 by mikequozl]

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WotD Perfect Tweets Roundup

Every week, we pose a challenge: using any word of the day from this week, create a perfect tweet, otherwise known as a twoosh. If we like it, your tweet will appear on our blog.

This week the theme was drinks. Here are our favorites.

Thanks to everyone for playing! Next week you’ll have another chance to perfect your word of the day perfect tweets. To get the word of the day, just follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe via email.

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This Week’s Language Blog Roundup

It’s that time again! Sit back with your beverage of choice and catch up on the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture.

This week was Banned Books Week, which celebrates the freedom to read. The Huffington Post offered an infographic on the American Library Association’s 10 “most challenged” books of 2010. The University of Pennsylvania is providing an online exhibit of “books that have been the objects of censorship or censorship attempts,” from Ulysses to Little Red Riding Hood, while Laura Miller at Salon suggested that there are some books that deserve to be banned.

Meanwhile, over at The New York Times, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg remembered when a dictionary could outrage. Johnson told y’all about southern American English and a “saguely vinister” propostion. Robert Lane Greene questioned standard English fluency, admitted general confusion about UN General Assembly week in New York, and examined “shackle-ly.”

OUP Blog continued the nerd conversation with a post about who exactly is a nerd, while Sesquiotica parsed the difference between nerd and geek. At the Boston Globe Ben Zimmer wrote about the art of the self-deprecating hashtag on Twitter, and on Language Log examined the elusive triple “is.” Victor Mair considered some suggestive tofu; Mark Liberman dissected a misleading headline, what English majors know about adverbs, and eye dialect in transcription; and Geoff Pullum was disappointed by poor phonetics.

Macmillan Dictionary blog continued their discussion of online English with a post about exclamation points and online writing and a roundup of favorite online English words. In addition Stan Carey wrote about foolish consistency in grammar, and on his own blog, reviewed Stephen Fry’s documentary about language, Planet Babel.

John McIntyre at You Don’t Say wrote about commas and semicolons, and assured us there’s nothing wrong with lowercase, dude. Fritinancy wondered if creative spelling makes a brand name more protectable; made us laugh about gender pronouns and animals; and marveled over diacritic-packed fruit. Swagger was Fritinancy’s word of the week (we like it too!), while swag and schwag also made the cut.

The Virtual Linguist discussed Romansh Grischun, “one of the four official languages of Switzerland” but “spoken by less than 1% of the population”; Pitmatic, “the old language of the Durham miners,” a mixture of Durham dialect and technical and mining-related vocabulary; baloney; and how to spell and pronounce the verb form of mouth.

Sesquiotica conversed about the many meanings of the word crisp, while Word Spy noticed lipdub, “a video that features one or more people lip-synching to a song, which is later dubbed over the edited footage,” and narb (narrative + bit), “an item of personal information posted online, particularly as it contributes, often unwittingly, to a personal narrative that individual is creating online.”

Literal Minded wrote about false ranges and falling satellites. Dialect Blog expressed dislike over the terms boyfriend and girlfriend (and got married, congratulations!), and examined the Amish dialect. K International buzzed about the language of honeybees; a study that showed language change may be driven by men; and a new app that translates menus.

In other news, the Dead Sea Scrolls are now available online; a man has been jailed for the theft of  “£36,000 of manuscripts by famous figures including Sir Winston Churchill, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot”; and io9 shared a story from ScienceNOW about why the perfect language needs to be both orderly and random.

Here are five authors famous for other things, and here is an exhibit at the Morgan Library on another very famous author. Here’s the biblioburro, donkey as traveling library, and 12 more very cool libraries from around the world. Check out these hot male librarians posing in a calendar for a good cause, and another librarian with an awesome job.

Here’s a corn maze of Noah Webster, and the world dictionary of trees. Madame Bovary is taken to a whole new level in a picture book with collages from Japanese artist Takahiro Kimura. Over a hundred years’ of Brothers Grimm illustrations are being brought together in a new translation. Flavorwire offered some twisted fairy tales for the modern reader, and Neil Patrick Harris, Anjelica Huston, and other celebrities read from a new Dr. Seuss Collection.

The Atlantic gave us a visual history of literary references on The Simpsons; Boing Boing tells us a few million virtual monkeys have randomly created Shakespeare; and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London announced details “of a festival that will see all 37 of William Shakespeare’s plays performed in 37 languages, from Urdu to Swahili, over six weeks in 2012.” The Guardian listed the ten best books that are based on songs, and NPR sang us a song about becoming a noun.

That’s it for this week! Remember, you can keep up with our blog by subscribing to the feed, following us on Twitter, or friending us on Facebook.

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Drinks Week: Beer

Three mini beers.

Every year from late September to early October, beer lovers around the world celebrate Oktoberfest, “an autumn festival that usually emphasizes merrymaking and the consumption of beer.” What better way for Wordnik to celebrate – and to wrap up Drinks Week – with some words about this grainy fermented concoction.

Back in the day, beer was often referred to as barley-broth, “used jocosely, and also in contempt.” Thus, barley-sick means to be intoxicated. Nowadays you might ask for a brew, named for the brewing process; a brewski, perhaps modeled on Russky, an offensive term for someone of Russian descent; some suds, referring to the frothy head of a beer; or a cold one.

In Australia, New Zealand, and some parts of the UK, a beer may be called a tinnie, referring to the can (which is actually made from aluminum).  Other Australian slang for beer includes amber nectar, amber fluid, coldie, and sherbet. Sherbet as slang for beer may come from the word’s original meaning, “a favorite cooling drink of the East, made of fruit-juices diluted with water, and variously sweetened and flavored,” or another meaning, “a powder made of bicarbonate of soda, sugar and flavourings, intended to be eaten alone or mixed with water to make a drink,” perhaps resembling a frothy beer.

In British English, a bitter is “a type of beer heavily flavored with hops,” while wallop is British slang term for beer and perhaps refers to the meaning “to boil with a continued bubbling or heaving and rolling of the liquor.”

Wallop helps to form codswallop, “senseless talk or writing; nonsense.” However, the origin of codswallop is obscure. Over at World Wide Words, Michael Quinion says it may come from the “testicles” meaning of cods, combined with wallop’s connection to “the dialect term meaning to chatter or scold.” Another explanation is that cod refers to Hiriam Codd, who in the 1870s “designed and patented a method of sealing a glass bottle by means of a ball in its neck,” perfect for preserving the fizz in fizzy drinks. Presumably, beer drinkers would be “dismissive of Mr Codd’s soft drinks,” and might refer “sneeringly to the fizzy drink as Codd’s wallop, and the resulting word later spread its meaning to refer to anything considered to be rubbish.”

A roadie is “a beer for the ride, for consumption while one is driving,” also known as a road soda (and definitely NOT something we’re recommending!) while a growler is “a vessel, as a pitcher, jug, pail, or can, brought by a customer for beer.” To rush the growler means “to take a container to the local bar to buy beer,” which in the 19th century was a job “often given to children.” But where does growler meaning container for beer come from? There are a few theories.

According to World Wide Words, it could refer to “the image of a hunter sending his dog rushing to fetch downed prey, so that the growler in our expression is the dog,” or “the growling noise the full can made as it was pushed across the bar,” or because the “scramble after beer” causes so much trouble. The Beer Advocate suggests that “when the beer sloshed around the pail, it created a rumbling sound as the CO2 escaped through the lid,” similar to growling, or that perhaps growling referred to the empty stomachs of factory workers before they were given beer at mealtimes.

A kegger is “a party at which beer is served from a keg.” Beer pong is “a drinking game in which players attempt to throw a ping pong ball into cups of beer,” and seems to have originated at Dartmouth College in the 1950s and 1960s. Dwile flonking is a game “in which teams take turns to dance while avoiding a ‘dwile’ (beer-soaked cloth) thrown by their opponents.” Dwile is “an old Suffolk dialect term for a dishcloth; dweil, said the same way, is the Dutch word for a floorcloth, or in defunct slang a drunkard,” while flonk may be based on flong, “the name in printing for a paper mould used to create an impression of type.”

Bad or inexpensive beer may be referred to as swill and piss. Swipes is “poor, washy beer; a kind of small beer,” and comes from swipe’s sense of “to drink, or drink off, hastily.” To be swipey is to be drunk. To be gambrinous is to be “full of beer,” and probably comes from King Gambrinus, a legendary king of Flanders, and an unofficial patron saint of beer or beer brewing. If you have beer goggles you have “the illusion that people are more attractive, brought on by alcohol consumption.” If you have a beer belly, you have “a protruding abdomen (usually in men) attributed to the consumption of beer.”

Beer and skittles is a British term referring to fun times (“Life’s no beer and skittles”). Skittles refers to “a pub game in which a ball is rolled down a wooden alley in order to knock down as many of the nine skittles as possible.” In the suds means to be “in turmoil or difficulty,” suggestive of the suds of beer. To carry the can means to “to take responsibility, especially in a challenging situation,” and may refer to “the member of a gang or party who fetches the beer for all and then has the melancholy task of returning the empty.”

For even more beer words, check out our list of the day. For beer sizes, here’s this list and this piece from Smithsonian Magazine. Fritinancy discusses some extreme beer brands (a pint of SkullSplitter sounds relaxing), while The New York Times recently had a beer session with Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery and editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer. And while coffee might smell better than it tastes, beer definitely tastes better than it smells.

For all things Drinks Week, be sure to check out our posts on the languages of wine, tea, mixed drinks, and coffee.

[Photo: “Beer,” CC BY 2.0 by Michelle Tribe]

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Drinks Week: Coffee

coffee

It’s National Coffee Day! We at Wordnik are celebrating by consuming as much caffeine as possible in its various forms, and with these words about coffee.

Let’s start with espresso (NOT expresso, got that?), “a concentrated coffee beverage brewed by forcing hot water under high pressure through finely ground coffee.” The word is Italian in origin and comes from esprimere, “to press out.” Crema is “the light-colored, orangish head (foam) on a cup of espresso.”

One shot of espresso is a solo or a single; two shots, a doppio or double; three, a triple; and four, a quad. A double double is a Canadian term for “coffee with the equivalent of two creamers and two packets of sugar.”

Espresso breve, literally “brief espresso,” is “espresso prepared with steamed half and half.” Ristretto, Italian for “short,” is an espresso “made with less hot water than normal.” A lungo, Italian for “long,” is espresso “made with more hot water than normal,” as opposed to an americano, which is an espresso with hot water added after it has been brewed, or a long black, which is hot water with espresso added to it. For an explanation of how the americano came to be named,  as well as a cup of joe, check out the Oatmeal’s funny and informative illustration.

A flat white is made with espresso and hot milk, while a white coffee is coffee with milk or cream added. A redeye is coffee with a shot of espresso, as well as slang for an overnight flight, and also known as a speedball, which is also “a mix of cocaine and heroin.” Affogato is “a drink or dessert topped with espresso, and sometimes also with caramel sauce or chocolate sauce,” and means “drowned” in Italian.

A macchiato is an “espresso topped with steamed milk,” and is Italian for “marked” or “stained.” A cortado is “espresso ‘cut’ with a small amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity,” from the Spanish word for “cut,” cortar. Café au lait  or café con leche (French and Spanish, respectively, for “coffee with milk”) is made of half coffee or espresso, and half hot milk.

A latte is “made from espresso and steamed milk, generally topped with foam,” while a mocha is a kind of latte with chocolate syrup. Baristas create latte art by “pouring steamed milk into a shot of espresso” in a way that makes “pattern or design” – such as a rosetta – or “by simply ‘drawing’ in the top layer of foam.” Microfoam is “foam consisting of very small bubbles, specifically as an element in the steamed milk used to make certain types of latte coffee.”

Melange – which comes from the Old French mesler, “to mix” – is a “Viennese coffee specialty, half steamed milk and half coffee,” similar to a cappuccino. A cappuccino is “made from espresso and milk that has been steamed and/or frothed,” and comes from the Italian Capuchin, an allusion to the Roman Catholic friars’ brown robes. A mochaccino is, you guessed it, a cappuccino with chocolate.

A crappucino, on the other hand, is something entirely different. Formally known as kopi luwak, it’s “coffee made from the beans of coffee berries eaten, digested and defecated by civets.” Kopi luwak is Indonesian in origin, with kopi meaning coffee and luwak, the regional word for the civet, “a carnivorous catlike animal that produces a musky secretion.” In other putting weird things in coffee adventures, there’s the eggspresso, which is exactly what it sounds like, peanut butter coffee, donut coffee, bacon coffee, and, um, haggis coffee.

For kookiness about coffee sizes, take measure of the OUP Blog post on the trenta, the largest of the Starbuck’s large, and this post from the Language Log on latte lingo, coffee sizes ridiculously borrowed from Romance languages, and 7-Eleven’s various “gulps.”

For all that can be done to a cup of joe, take a trip to this coffee house list and this one. Then again, if you’re not a cafe aficionado (a caficionado?), coffee might be one of those things that smell better than they taste.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Jennie Faber]

 

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Drinks Week: Funny Drink Names

What do mudslides, hurricanes, earthquakes, and flaming volcanoes all have in common? Sure, they’re natural disasters, but they’re also mixed drinks with funny names.

Where do these amusing monikers come from? Sometimes they’re named for appearance. The mudslide, “consisting of vodka, Kahlua and Bailey’s,” is named for its muddy color (Kahlúa is a coffee-flavored liqueur made in Mexico), while the grasshopper, “made with green crème de menthe,” is named for its bright green hue. The flaming volcano, “made of rum, brandy, pineapple juice, orange juice, almond syrup, and sometimes other ingredients,” is placed in a volcano bowl which creates a “crater.” The alcohol in the crater is then set aflame – voila, a flaming volcano.

Some drinks were named for how they were originally served. The hurricane, made with “fruit juice, syrup or grenadine and rum,” may have been named after the hurricane-lamp-shaped glasses used by a New Orleans tavern owner in the 1940s who “needed to create a new drink to help him get rid of all of the less popular rum.” The screwdriver, “made of vodka and orange juice,” supposedly got its name “because American petroleum engineers in Saudi Arabia secretly added vodka to small cans of orange juice and stirred the mixture with their screwdrivers.”

Others were named for their effects on the drinker. The earthquake, three parts absinthe and three parts cognac, and attributed to painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, may have been named for its tendency to shake one up. The zombie, “a cocktail of rum and fruit juices,” supposedly turns its imbibers into, well, zombies.

Then there are those drinks named after people, real or fake. Harvey Wallbanger – the drink is “made with vodka, Vanilla Galliano and orange juice” – was supposedly a California surfer who “liked his screwdrivers spiked with Galliano.” After a particularly bad day:

he had one too many. Trying to leave the bar, Harvey stumbled into both furniture and the wall. Being a regular at this bar, and despite his performance, he returned and simply became known as the Wallbanger.

The bloody mary, a mixture of vodka and tomato juice, has a variety of different origins: Queen Mary I of England, aka “Bloody Mary”; a waitress named Mary at Bucket of Blood, a Chicago bar; or the actress Mary Pickford. The Tom and Jerry, “a hot sweetened drink of rum and water spiced with cinnamon, cloves, etc., and beaten up with eggs,” was named not for the cartoon characters but for characters in a 19th century play.

The Shirley Temple, “a non-alcoholic cocktail traditionally made with ginger ale, grenadine syrup, and orange juice garnished with a maraschino cherry and slice of lemon,” may have been invented by a Beverly Hills bartender to serve to then child star, Shirley Temple. The Shirley Temple Black, a play on her married name, includes rum.

The fuzzy navel, “usually made of peach schnapps and orange juice,” is  named for its ingredients – fuzzy for peach, navel for orange. Satan’s whiskers is named for an old-timey “swear” word (sort of like a 1920s version of Merlin’s beard), and perhaps also for its reddish appearance from one of its ingredients, Grand Marnier.

Most of us have probably heard of the screaming orgasm, “vodka, Irish Cream, and coffee liqueur”; slippery nipple, “a layered cocktail shooter most commonly composed of Baileys Irish Cream and Sambuca”; and sex on the beach, “vodka, peach schnapps, cranberry juice and orange juice.” However, the origins of their names is obscure, at least as far as we could find.

Then there’s the just plain weird. The Monkey Gland, “a cocktail of gin, orange juice, grenadine and absinthe,” was named for a particular surgical technique:

Back in the 1920s, when a well-heeled gentleman’s vim and vigor were flagging, he would visit a Paris surgeon for an implant of monkey testicle tissue.

Hair of the dog, “an alcoholic drink taken the morning after to cure a hangover or withdrawal symptoms,” comes from the old Scottish belief that:

a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine next morning to soothe the nerves. “If this dog do you bite, soon as out of your bed, take a hair of the tail in the morning.”

For a totally bro beverage, check out Fritinancy’s post on the guy’s version of a girly drink, as well as her write-up on some effen vodka. For even more funny drink names, look at our list of the day and this list of cocktails. That’s the spirit! And remember, liquor is quicker.

Tomorrow, to nurse your hangovers, we’ll give you some words about coffee.

[Photo: CC BY 2.0 by Karen]

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Drinks Week: Tea

Türkish Teatime (CC)

Türkish Teatime (CC), by marfis75

We’re serving up a lexicon of libations all week at Wordnik (in honor of Oktoberfest, National Bourbon Heritage Month, and Thursday’s National Coffee Day). Yesterday we poured some wine words; now it’s time for tea.

Tea ceremonies are almost as varied as tea types. In Great Britain, there’s afternoon tea, or low tea, “a small meal eaten between lunch and dinner.” There’s the tea break, “a snack taken during a break in the work day,” and the tea dance, “a late afternoon or early evening dance, typically with a live orchestra (often referred to as a palm court orchestra) playing light classical music.”

There’s the tea party, “a semi-formal afternoon social gathering at which tea, sandwiches and cakes are served,” also written as tea-party and once known as “any disquieting occurrence or happening,” or “something easy to do or accomplish.” There’s Lewis Carroll’s Mad Tea-Party, the Boston Tea Party, and, um, that Tea Party.

JRR Tolkien gave us elevenses, “tea or coffee taken at midmorning and often accompanied by a snack.” Originating from the county of Devon in England is Devonshire or cream tea, “a light afternoon meal consisting of scones, jam and clotted cream served with the drink tea.”

We can’t forget high tea, “a fairly substantial meal that includes tea and is served in the late afternoon or early evening,” also known as meat tea. But as Lynneguist writes:

I’ve never heard a British person use the term [high tea]. They say things like I have to get home and make the children’s tea, by which they mean their evening meal. In my experience, tea, when referring to a meal, is used by my friends mostly to refer to simple meals they make for their children or themselves in the early evening; a dinner party, for example, would not be referred to as tea.

Slang for a cup of tea in British English is cuppa, as well as char, an alternation of the Chinese word for tea, cha.

Yum cha, Cantonese Chinese for “drink tea,” is a traditional Chinese meal of many small dishes and Chinese tea, often partaken late weekend mornings. Yum cha is also known as dim sum in Cantonese and dian xin in Mandarin. Dim sum refers to the small dishes, and translates as “a little bit of heart.” Common yum cha teas include chrysanthemum, jasmine, and oolong, “a variety of black tea with the flavor of green tea.” Oolong translates as “black dragon.”

If you want to get fancy, brew some gunpowder tea, a green tea in which each leaf is rolled into a pellet; or longjing, dragon well tea, another type of green tea. Of the black tea variety (black teas are referred to as hong cha, literally “red tea,” in Chinese) try some souchong, pouchong, or congou. Congou comes from the Amoy or Xiamen Chinese dialect and means “elaborately prepared (tea),” and corresponds to the Mandarin Chinese gōngfu (chá), “worksmanship (tea),” a different gōngfu, by the way, than the martial art, as explained by Victor Mair at Language Log.

Or you may want to try ba bao cha, which translates from Mandarin as “eight treasure tea.” Eight is the number of ingredients – “goji berries, jujube (a type of red date,) dried citrus peel, dried ginseng root, rock sugar crystals, dried chrysanthemum flowers, green tea, and dried longan fruit” –  and is an auspicious number in Chinese culture. Eight or ba is a homonym of the word for prosperity (the number four, si, is a homonym for the word for death, and therefore a very unlucky number).

The Japanese tea ceremony is known as the Way of Tea, translated from the Japanese, chado, with cha meaning “tea” and do – sometimes spelled tao – meaning “the way”; and as chanoyu, translating roughly as “tea of hot water.” The ceremony involves the ritual preparation and presentation of matcha, a powdered green tea.

Another green tea is sencha, which differs from matcha in that the leaves are not ground. Shincha is “the first month’s harvest of Sencha,” while bancha is the second harvest of sencha. Gyokura is an expensive green tea that differs from sencha in that “it is grown under the shade rather than the full sun.” On the other hand, genmaicha, a green tea combined with roasted brown rice, “was originally drunk by poor Japanese, as the rice served as a filler and reduced the price of the tea.” Genmaicha is also known as popcorn tea and people’s tea (and is this blogger’s personal favorite).

Central to tea life in Russia, parts of Europe, the Middle-East, northern China, and elsewhere is the samovar. Translated as “self boiling,” the samovar is “a copper urn. . .in which water is kept boiling for use when required for making tea, live charcoal being placed in a tube which passes up through the center of the urn.” The tea concentrate is called zavarka, while the boiled water is kipyatok. Tea the beverage is referred to as chai (also “a beverage made with black teas, steamed milk and sweet spices based loosely on Indian recipes”). The chainik is “a teapot with a spout for making zavarka,” and also means “incapable dummy” in Russian slang.  For even more on Russian tea, check out this excellent source.

As for tea culture in the United States, one could argue that it surrounds iced tea. Or is it ice tea? Mark Liberman at Language Log tries to figure it out. Variations of iced tea include sun tea, “a beverage, often iced, made from tea leaves or other herbs steeped in water exposed to direct sunlight”; sweet-tea; and Thai iced tea, also known as cha-yen.

Finally, for tea types, lingo, and paraphernalia, be sure to check out our list of the day.

Tomorrow we take a look at funny drink names. Get your tiny umbrellas ready!

[Photo: CC BY-SA 2.0 by marfis75]