आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

[muckefuck]

For today's word, I'd like to have a closer look at the second element in the compound धूपदानी/ਧੂਪਦਾਨੀ dhoopdaanee posted earlier. Not that the first isn't interesting in its own right (although here it means "incense", its most common modern sense is actually "sunshine"), but the second has undergone a curious shift as well. It seems to be a diminutive of दान/ਦਾਨ, a concrete noun from the Old Aryan root दा dā- "give". So is the development something like "gift" > "alms" > "poorbox" > "small receptacle"? Or "gift" > "gift box" > "box"? Impossible to say with the tools at my disposal. Incidentally, the earlier meaning of धूपदानी was a box for incense; only later did this come to mean something incense could be burned in.

Other compounds with -दानी/-ਦਾਨੀ:

चायदानी/ਚਾਹਦਾਨੀ chaaydaanee/chaahdaanee "teapot"
राखदानी/ਰਾਖਦਾਨੀ raakhdaanee "ashtray" (राख/ਰਾਖ raakh "ashes")
कामदानी kaamdaanee "diaper; nappy" (lit. "work receptacle"![*])
चूहेदानी/ਚੂਹੇਦਾਨੀ choohedaanee "mousetrap" (चूहे/ਚੂਹੇ choohe "mice")

[*] Platts glosses this as "A kind of embroidery work on net or muslin", so perhaps we have an example of recent metonymic euphemism.

Comments

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to start calling diapers "outboxes". Lk. "outhouses"?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Only if you call breasts "inboxes".

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

Nn, chigau. Most kids need diapers for far longer than they breastfeed. Plus, for adults, the plate is the inbox, the toilet the outbox. My cat's litterbox is literally an outbox. therefore, for infants, I'd have to nominate the whole world itself as their inbox; after all, they'll put anything they can find in their mouths.

[wiped.livejournal.com]

-dān (دان) is a common persian suffix meaning "place of" or "holding"; it seems likely that it'd be related etymologically to the element in question.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

That probably explains it. Most or all of the listed terms have variants ending in -दान/-ਦਾਨ -daan. (The feminine ending -ई/-ਈ often has diminutive force in Hindi/Panjabi.)