आज का शब्द aaj kaa shabd / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ ajj daa shabad

[muckefuck]

New feature, everyone! wwidsith proposed that I add Hindi to my list of Words of the Day, but the problem there is that my Hindi is simply too basic and my lexicographical resources too insufficient to do that without dumbing down the rest of the vocabulary.

Today's word is कद्दू/ਕੱਦੂ kaddoo which means "gourd" or "pumpkin". To specify the latter, Panjabi uses the modified terms ਹਲਵਾ ਕੱਦੂ halvaa kaddoo "halwa gourd" and ਮਿੱਠਾ ਕੱਦੂ siTTa kaddoo "sugar gourd". An alternative word is लौकी/ਲੌਕੀ ~ ਲਉਕੀ laukee and I couldn't tell you what the difference in usage is. The whole field is more confusing than I realised, since pumpkins are not a single species of squash, as I previously thought, but cultivars from at least four different ones: Cucurbita pepo, mixta, maxima, and moschata. In Panjabi at least, some of these also have specific names, e.g. ਮਿਠਾ ਕੱਦੂ miTaa kaddoo ("sweet") or ਵੱਡਾ ਕੱਦੂ vaDDaa kaddoo ("big") for C. maxima; ਸਫ਼ੈਦ ਕੱਦੂ safaid kaddoo ("white") for C. pepo, etc.

ETA: So, mollpeartree, any film songs that talk about gourds? A search on "Bollywood kaddoo" brought up this quote from Shabana Azmi (on her role in the BBC2 production Banglatown Banquet): "I play a strange kind of woman with a thing for growing kaddoo in my small balcony."

FETA: Wait, a further search turned up baigan bhindi kaddoo shaljam khaate hain dilwaale ("Those with heart are eating eggplant, okra, squash, turnip") from the 1950 film Baksheesh.

Comments

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

To me, lauki is a bottle gourd, greenish on the outside, whitish on the inside. ("葫蘆" in wikipedia matches the name given in Beyond Bok Choy, "葫蘆瓜".)

In general, I've found specialized food reference works to be more useful than dictionaries for foodstuffs. (I have a Chinese-French dictionary which translates "白菜" as "chou".)