WotD: band-aid/elastoplast

[muckefuck]

1. das Pflaster
2. de pleister
3. la tirita, la curita
4. la tireta
5. le pansement
6. y plastr
7. an greimlín
8. 반창고 (絆瘡膏)
9. 創可貼 chuāngkětiē

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

For good reason: It's a direct borrowing, if not of the French then of the common Italian source word sparadrappo "it saves cloth".

[pne.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have been more verbose; I intended to imply something along the lines of "I never heard of 'pansement'; the usual word we learned was 'sparadrap'. Though it's quite possible that the word we learned is not particularly common and that 'pansement' is indeed the common word. But perhaps the word we learned *is* the word that 'should' (for some value of) have appeared in your list? I have no idea."

[areia.livejournal.com]

My grandmother would sometimes call them a sparadrap, even in Flemish. I wonder if it was a brand of bandages at some point.

More commonly in Flanders we'd call it ne plakker, but that does sound very colloquial.

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

NOw that's some nice etymology.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I love these kinds of compounds in Romance. My latest discovery along these lines was "lawnmower" (Cat. tallagespa, Sp. cortacésped "it cuts lawn"; It. tosaerba "it shears grass").

[anicca-anicca.livejournal.com]

So do I, although I can't come up with examples right now. It's that "dances with wolves" structure I find cute. It's not Rasenmäh*er* or lawnmow*er* but "he who mows the lawn". It's a different kind of personalization which just sounds neat to my foreign ears.
What I love about "sparadrappo" is that it evokes a whole story. I've never thought about what people would do before there were plasters or tissues.
They could have done nothing, or licked the blood off (the way you (or at least I) still do with a little bleed on your hand, or, if it was bad enough, used cloth. But material was much more valuable at the time, and you'd have to wash it, fix it, blabla.
Saves cloth. Love it.