[Fictionary] reremouse!

Pierre Abbat phma at phma.optus.nu
Thu Mar 3 00:18:01 EST 2011


> Jean-Joseph - If it's unidentified, how does it come to have a name?

He recorded the name it has in some Chibchan language, but not a precise 
enough description to identify which bird it is. He also picked up the 
word "xoc" from the Mayas (according to Wiktionary it just means "fish"), and 
passed it on to another mariner as the name of a particularly vicious kind of 
cartilaginous fish. It took centuries and some linguistic digging to figure 
out how "xoc" became "shark", and etymologists aren't all convinced that 
that's where it came from.

Pierre

-- 
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


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