752
Pter
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
752 points (97.4% liked)
memes
10557 readers
2409 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
In Czech we call it "vrtulník" (propeller thing), which I find kinda hilarious now that I think about it.
The german word for aeroplane is similar, "Flugzeug" directly translates to "flying thing". Helicopter is also fun, "Hubschrauber" translates to "lifting screwer".
I don't think it means "thing", but rather "Gerät" as in 2 c):
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Zeug
It evolved from a word for "pulling"
I guess for "Flugzeug", 'device' works better but I don't think I have ever thought about it in that way. From my experience usage usually goes more like this: "Pack dein Zeug zusammen wir gehen weiter." which I think best translates to 'Stuff' or 'things'. Zeug is an interesting word though. It is also used for the harness of a draft animal ("sich ins Zeug legen"), it's bridle ("Zaumzeug"), bed linen ("Bettzeug"), work tools ("Werkzeug") , or as a word for nonsense ("red kein dummes Zeug"). I would say it started, as you said, as a word for device but became a slightly negative word for 'Stuff'.
Not to be confused with Hubschraubär.
Now I am curious as to what the Chinese characters in their word for helicopter mean, since panda is "bear cat," owl is "cat headed eagle," and peacock is "thunder chicken," IIRC.