WotD: fieldfare

[muckefuck]

1. der Krammetsvogel, die Wacholderdrossel
2. de kramsvogel
3. el zorzal real
4. la griva cerdana,el tord burell
5. la grive litorne
6. y socan eira
7. an siocán [sneachta], an glaisneach
8. kwiczoł
9. 개똥지빠귀
10. 田鶇 tiāndōng

Notes: This term is an illustration of how sometimes the most obscure items are the most easily translated with a dictionary and yet this is of no use when reading. I'm happily chugging through Fontane's Stechlin right now and the other night came across Krammetsvögelbrüste in a description of a dish served at a dinner party. Okay, obviously we're talking about some sort of fowl, but that alone isn't enough colour for my colourtext.

I was in bed, however, with the Langenscheidt at my side, so I cracked it open and found Krammetsvogel there glossed as "fieldfare". Not a word I know and I wondered aloud if it was some kind of archaic collective for "all the small winged things what we caught in the net". monshu didn't know it either, but he guessed maybe they were talking about ortolans[*]. If Fontane had used the synonym Wacholderdrossel ("juniper thrush") I'd've known at once we were talking about a particular species, but I still wouldn't've been able to put an image to the name.

Pretty much every page of the novel has at least one word like this. Something called a Rundell features very prominently in the garden of the big house. The old lord has a Karoline in billiards room that he treasures very much. A whole exchange between him and a guest was rendered obscure by several mentions of Renommisterei. It's still more fun than annoying hunting down the meanings for these old words, but sometimes I wish I had a Fontane-Lexikon from some diligent philologist who had done all the hunting down for me.

[*] He wasn't the only one to suggest this, so for the record the German word for "ortolan" is Ortolan or Gartenammer--Fettammer if you mean an ortolan that's been kept in the dark and tricked into gorging itself prior to being drowned in Armagnac. And you thought veal calves had it bad!