WotD: hardware store

[muckefuck]

1. der Eisenwarenladen
2. de ijzenwinkel
3. la ferreteria
4. la ferretería
5. le magasin à ferraille, le magasin de quincaillerie
6. y siop nwyddau haearn/metel
7. an siopa crua-earraí
8. sklep z narzędziami
9. 철물점 (鐵物店)
10. 五金店 wǔjīndiàn

Notes: Been meaning for over a week to make it to Clark-Devon Hardware for some drain cleaner but circumstances have conspired against me. Finally I decided a weekday morning trip would be most foolproof. I was in and out in a jiffy--which frankly is a bug rather than a feature. Next time I'll try for a Saturday morning, when the...ahem...browsing is at its most rewarding.

Comments

[chinesestudio.livejournal.com]

Do you know anything about the etymology of 五金店, or I guess more specifically the compound 五金? A Google search for 五金 on its own makes its meaning fairly clear, but the compound itself is a bit obscure seeming in terms of how it got formed, so I hoped you might shed some light.

(PS Hi, I found your blog via linguaphiles and you're an interesting-seeming guy, so I decided to follow you. Hope you don't mind!)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You're familiar with five phase theory? Each of the five "elements" is associated not only with a particular directions and animal but also a colour, a smell, a taste, a sacred mountain, a race of barbarians, a fruit, a grain, and so on and so forth. So "five" comes to express "all sorts of". (Cf. "seven seas" in English.) Thus 五金 or "five metals" really covers all the sorts of metal known to us and--by extension--objects made from them.