Dandelion

[Dr. Goodword]

• dandelion •

Pronunciation: dæn-di-lai-ên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A widely distributed weed of the genus Taraxacum having a long tap root and a rosette of deeply notched leaves, bright yellow flower, replaced by a fluffy ball of seeds.

Notes: I hesitated to call this plant a "weed" because it is farmed as a salad in New Jersey and widely eaten here in Pennsylvania. In the spring some people enjoy what the Pennsylvania Dutch call "ham and dandy", boiled ham and fresh spring dandelions.

In Play: Dandelion leaves are bitter, but some people enjoy salads created from them: "Most people kill dandelions with weed-killer, but Chick Pease cuts them, cleans them, and makes salads out of them." Dandelions grow everywhere: "Dandelions have spread all over the world because it is so much fun to blow their seeds."



Word History: Today's Good Word began its life as Old French dent de lion "tooth of a/the lion", for its toothed leaves, a translation of Medieval Latin dens leonis. German has a loan translation of the same phrase: Löwenzahn. Den(t)s was passed down from PIE dent-/dont- "tooth". The Germanic languages took the O-variant, as seen in German Zahn "tooth" and Dutch tand "tooth". Old English removed the N and came to toth, which gave us today's tooth. Latin only slightly modified the PIE word to dens, dentis, ultimate origin of English dental and dentist. Greek added a prefix to come up with odon, seen in the Hellenic borrowings orthodontist and mastodon. Lion was borrowed from French, which inherited it from Latin leo(n) "lion", which borrowed it from Greek leon. Greek borrowed the word from a non-Indo-European language, maybe Semitic, like Egyptian labai or Hebrew labhi. (Today our respect is due Susan Maynard, who saw the fascination in today's Good Word and shared it with us.)

[Dr. Goodword]

Monika Freund just e-mailed me this comment: "… and in German we have the exact translation: Löwenzahn! And we also use it as salad."

I can see the connection between the Pennsylvania Dutch (Deitch = German) and Germany. Are there any other countries with populations that consume dandelions?

[damoge]

I believe "Pennsylvania Dutch" refers directly to German immigrants. The locals misunderstood the German word "Deutsch" and thought they REALLY meant "Dutch".

Sigh.

[Slava]

I'd be surprised if there is anyplace out there with dandelions that doesn't make some form of dandelion wine.

[Philip Hudson]

The Pennsylvania Dutch are actually Germans. In the German language, the word German is similar to the word Dutch. The lost Dutchman gold-mine [I don't think it ever existed] belonged to a German man. My German ancestors were named Heite, but in the USA it got changed to Hitt. It sort of means, heathen, but only because they lived on the heath. It had nothing to do with their religion. The Hitts are my only non-British ancestors and they had to become English citizens before they were allowed to enter the colonies in 1707.

[bbeeton]

My ancestors were also German, but one of my uncles was known to call another a "blockheaded Dutchman" when particularly annoyed.

I don't think it was just my non-linguistically-trained younger self. I've never heard "Deutschman"; it just doesn't sound "English", a U.S.-accented form of which was spoken by all non-first-generation family members.

[Philip Hudson]

bbeeton: "Deutschman" doesn't sound English because it isn't English.
Dutch is and it usually means someone whose ancestors came from The Netherlands. However, it is often used pejoratively. Having a Dutch uncle can be good or bad. It may mean a person who criticizes you harshly. Or it can mean a person who gives a younger person good advice. A prostitute is sometimes called a Dutch wife. Dutchmen are often considered stubborn. In Dutch means in trouble. Black Dutch can mean any of a number of things about one's ancestry and is not usually complementary. To "go Dutch" or "Dutch treat" means each person pays her/his own way. To give a Dutch rub is to harshly rub someone's head with your knuckles. Double Dutch is a form of jumping rope [Google it] --- und so weiter [Deutsch]. I must hasten to inform that while a Dutch wife may be a pejorative use, a non-literal Chinese wife is not. A Chinese wife is a cylindrical tube of rattan or cane used in beds as a rest for the limbs and an aid in keeping cool. On the other hand, my old uncle urged me to marry a fat woman because she would keep me warm at night.

[bbeeton]

Philip, Thanks for the additions to my vocabulary. But I don't have to look up double Dutch -- I could manipulate the jump ropes for other jumpers, but never mastered the footwork without getting tangled up. (There's also double English, with the ropes turning up and outward rather than up and inward. Also tangling.)

To return to the original topic, wilted dandelion greens were also in my youthful diet. Hot bacon drippings mixed with cider vinegar and a bit of onion, salt and pepper. Yummy! Very similar to the dressing for German potato salad, which nobody I know seems to make any more. It was often my job in the spring to go out and "harvest" the young, tender dandelion leaves, before they grew bitter after blooming. Actually, the technique involved pulling or digging up the whole plant, and discarding the root. Not to worry -- they were always back the next year, no matter how many were removed from the scene.

[David Myer]

We also have a Dutch oven - which is just a very large casserole pot.

I haven't come across Double Dutch in skipping, but then, I don't skip, so hardly surprising. Double Dutch for me is when someone says something that is beyond my comprehension. They may just as confusingly be talking in Dutch for all the sense I can make of it - or even double Dutch.

Of course there is also the great cockney music hall song that contains the words "there ain't a lady living in the land that I'd swap for my dear old Dutch." This is a reference, as I understand it to the singer's wife. In rhyming slang, a dutch (probably duch) is short for Duchess. And the particular Duchess was the Duchess of Fife. I did once take it upon myself to investigate this Duchess of Fife. As I recall she was one of Queen Victoria's daughters who married the said Duke. Quite a character I gather.

[Dr. Goodword]

The Germans around central Pennsylvania emigrated from the Palatine region of Germany around Heidelberg and other towns. The "Pennsylvanian Dutch" called themselves "Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch", which their English-speaking neightbors picked up as "Pennsylvanian Dutch". By the way, Dutch came from the same Germanic ancestor and Deutsch. Also, Wikipedia also carried articles in Pennsilfaanische Deitsch which you may read here.

By the way again, the Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch around Lewisburg, PA are generally Mennonite and Amish who eschew things of the modern world. Their horse and buggies pass by my house weekly.

[Debbymoge]

Am pleased that I could read and understand most of it. Saying it out loud helped a lot.

My grandmother learned English only after moving to the United States at the end of the 1800s. Self-taught, her spelling was "interesting". She wrote often to her grown children as they moved away from the immediate neighborhood in Boston where she stayed.
All of them said the only way they could understand what she wrote was to read it aloud, and with an accent.

Holding onto language within an immigrant community was, of course, not unique to the Pennsylvania Dutch. (My grandmother was from Lithuania.)
There was, until the late 1900s, a community of folks in southern New Hampshire still speaking Elizabethan English that they brought with them in the early 1600s.

Such dialects were obviously a feature of other lands. In fact, there are times when at weekly markets in England today, one can hear the rhythms and "songs" of other languages while walking around and looking at the variety of items on display, when in fact, the only language being spoken is English in the many many dialects preserved in the towns.

FUN!!