Not quite a Word of the Day

[muckefuck]

If I were feeling less lazy, I would've posted already about some of the sweet vocab I'm gleaning from my recent reading, but occasionally a word comes along that's simply too awesome to be ignored and today that word is achichincle. Some of its awesomeness consists in the way it wears its Nahuatl origins like four-foot feathered Aztec shield and some of it lies in the meaning; my Harper-Collins glosses this as "minion".

Other sources translate as "member of one's entourage" or "hanger-on". They also give a Nahuatl etymology that I admit to being sceptical of at first, namely atl "water" + chichinqui "sucker". But it seems to check out--at least, there is a Classical Nahuatl verb chichina meaning "to suck" with a derived agent noun in -qui. I could speculate how you get from that to "a Sancho Panza", but I'd prefer to remain agnostic on that count until I can find a more detailed account.

Of course, this got me wondering what roughly equivalent words would be in other languages. It's difficult at times to separate the meaning of "hanger-on" (which to me is simply someone who clings to another hoping to benefit from their popularity or influence) from "sponger" or "mooch" (which I think of as someone who's only around when he wants something). German Klette "barnacle; limpet" seems to line up well enough with the first meaning, but it's not easy to be sure.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Interesting. From our current, highly unusual (individualistic, free agent capitalist), cultural perspective the many kinds of clientage or vassalage all seem vaguely not-respectable. I wonder what the status of a "minion" would be in Nahuatl culture.

[donncha22.livejournal.com]

Is fíor duit. Is álainn an focal é! Má tá a leathbhreac Gaeilge uait, bain triail as "sponger" agus "hanger-on" anseo:

http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaeilge/focloiri/daoine/lorg.php

[foodpoisoningsf.livejournal.com]

Leech

Creature