Keeping On eeping On Where is your cardigan from?

by Liz Sugrue

Whether you made it yourself, got it from the op shop or an expensive boutique – it doesn’t matter really, the word cardigan is from the Welsh language. Your pyjamas and your jodhpurs and your dungarees are from India and even more so if they are coloured khaki.

So many words we use in our everyday speech come from other languages, some are obvious like restaurant, menu and hotel. Others are more interesting like corduroy and denim. They are also French in origin. There is a version of corduroy history that suggests its etymology is “cord du Roi” which literally translates to the cloth of the king. I like this idea even if it’s not strictly true.

Denim was originally made in Nimes in France and was called serge de Nimes which was then shortened to denim. Interestingly dungaree initially referred to fabric made in India. The word has been used in English as far back as about 1615 and is possibly from the Marathi word dongri which Wikipedia tells me is a dockside village near Mumbai. Dungarees are now known as reliable work wear made from tough durable cotton drill. Parkas were originally made from seal or caribou skin by the Caribou Inuit, who needed a garment to help them stay warm in the Canadian arctic. And Pea Coats originated from the Dutch or West Frisian word pijjekker or pijjakker, in which pij referred to the type of cloth used, a coarse kind of twilled blue cloth with a nap on one side. Jakker designates a man’s short, heavy coat.

Balaclava is named for a Russian village (Balaklava) where soldiers fighting in the Crimean War wore knitted hats that covered their faces.

So, it seems our clothes are from all over the world, despite most of them being made in China these days. It’s interesting to think of the origin of these words even if we are more comfortable in our culottes rather than a bikini.

Apart from clothes, we use so many other foreign words in our day-to-day speech. Now just for fun I’m going to write a couple of paragraphs using as many “foreign” words as possible. Here goes.

An anonymous (Greek) guru (Sanskrit) with a chronic (Greek) case of wanderlust (German) went on a safari (Arabic) to hunt for some loot (Hindi). In his rucksack (German) he packed a cookie (Dutch), some lemons (Arabic), broccoli (Italian), a couple of bits of tofu (Chinese) and some ketchup (Chinese). He was wearing some moccasins (native American) and had a gung-ho attitude (Chinese). He stopped on a patio (Spanish) where he made a faux-pas (French) by calling the local head honcho (Japanese) a Neanderthal (German). He was a macho (Spanish) Admiral (Arabic) who attempted some kung fu (Chinese) but he was a bit of a klutz (Yiddish) and looked like he was from a kindergarten (German). After a lot of alcohol (Arabic) the guru ended up joining the vigilantes (Spanish). Their uniforms were khaki (India) jodhpurs (India) with cerise (French) cardigans (Welsh).

The denim (French) clad paparazzi (Italian) chased them on their mopeds (Swedish). They escaped into an apartment (Italian) where they found some children watching cartoons (Italian).

This could carry on ad infinitum if we started looking into Latin words used today. I won’t though, for fear of going on ad nauseam.