One thing to know about French language, is that whenever there is a grammar rule, it only covers at best 50% of cases and the rest are exceptions to the rule.
For instance:
- cigar -> cigarette
- trompe -> trompette
- (Cool, looks like we have a rule here)
- baguette, must be a small bague, right ? WRONG ! It’s a small bâton.
bâton
That doesn’t seem to be the case. It seems to be imported from Italian and doesn’t have a form of the base word
Baguette has many senses in French. One of them is a small or thin stick, a regular stick is a bâton. I don’t know the etymological details, but as for sense these words today, it remains true that baguette is a kind of small bâton.
This is why I hate French but as a native English speaker I can’t really complain without hypocrisy.
Strikingly similar to English
blame the Normans
baguette, bagel, bagest
My fav pokemon species
Bagaga
You shot his dog!? Now Bagaga will hunt you down
Baguette is genuinely a diminutive, but the French is a loanword from Italian bacchetta “little stick,” from bacchio “stick.”
Funnily enough, “bacteria” also means “little stick” due to the shape of the first ones seen under a microscope, and the word shares the same etymological root (reconstructed as *bak- in proto-Indo-European), but in Greek – bakterion is a little staff, baktron is a staff or stick without the diminutive.
There is also the french word bague but that means ring, as in wedding ring type ring not a bell ringing.
“Yeah, I got a staff infection.”
So Bacteria indeed implies the existence of Baktron
People in this thread: Hey, I’ll do etymology in the wrong language, it’s all the same anyway.
What is a Bagu and where do I get it?
How dare you hide this filth deep in the comments. This is fp worthy.
Dunno, but a Bague is like a Hague for food criminals.
Baggu is a brand of reusable bags…
All bags are reusable if you don’t discard them
Eichhörnchen implies the existence of a German mega-Squirrel.
Eichhörner and Trägenbögen
Kanin (mega-rabbit) too.
By the way, Czech králík is also a diminutive: of král, meaning “king”.
Mosquito implies the existence of a far larger Mosqo.
Mosca is Spanish for fly. One of the cooks at a place I worked called me that because he didn’t like me
a mosquito is just a smaller mosque
It’s like Pokemon. Baguette, Bagetto, BAG.
Egg, Baconegg, Fullenglish.
That reminds me of a lame oneliner I came up with years ago:
… but no cigar sir! Not even cigarette, don’t even mention cigarillo!
This has lead to me learning that bimbette and himbette are both words.
I would be so pissed if my bus ticket from Newark to Paris was rendered worthless because I couldn’t buy cigars by the bague.
Le maximum du baguette, c’est la blague.
