Here's a German word I appreciate more and more I recent years: Handgemenge.
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Here's a German word I appreciate more and more I recent years: Handgemenge.
It means "a brawl", and it's part of a popular pun format here on fedi (perhaps elsewhere), where one person starts a pun, the the other warns them not to continue, and the first finishes the joke anyway. The format ends with the word as a stage direction of sorts.
I know it from childhood, because it was introduced to me via another thing virtually unknown outside of Germany, the Midgard role-playing game.
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Jens Finkhäuser 🌻replied to Jens Finkhäuser 🌻 last edited by
The game doesn't matter here, but what does matter is that I had no reason to use or hear that word beforehand. It's not commonly used, I think, and outside of perhaps a news article on some kind of brawl, I don't think I'd see it very much.
Which is why I appreciate the pun format, even if it can be a little forced sometimes.
At any rate, I also like the word itself. Etymologically it is more closely related to melee than brawl, at least indirectly. Melee derives (TL;DR) from...
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Jens Finkhäuser 🌻replied to Jens Finkhäuser 🌻 last edited by
... Latin "miscere" meaning "to mix", just like that verb does. A German verb, "mischen" also does, and retains the meaning.
The way German compound words work, a Gemisch is a mixture. Technically, a Gemenge also can be, because we also have a verb "mengen", but it is rarely encountered.
However, we do also have the noun "Menge" which means either "amount", or when describing people, a mass or audience or other large group.
So even if the word itself doesn't mean that, "Gemenge"...
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smallcircles (Humanity Now 🕊)replied to Jens Finkhäuser 🌻 last edited by
@jens we also have the word in Dutch i.e. "handgemeen".
According to wiktionary it comes from middle Dutch with "gemeen" in the meaning of "coming together". Hands coming together.