Quote for the day!

ഉന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തു-
ന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്തുന്താളെയുന്തു്

(According to legend, the very first couplet in
മഞ്ജരി inspired by which കൃഷ്ണഗാഥ was written.)

Monday, November 30, 2009

Cuts and bruises

The other day my mom told me she was using some മുറിവെണ്ണ. I found it a bit funny since we can split മുറിവെണ്ണ in two ways.

One is മുറിവെണ്ണ = മുറി + വെണ്ണ meaning a piece of butter :-)
Of course, the correct split is മുറിവെണ്ണ = മുറിവ് + എണ്ണ meaning oil for a cut.

We see the same root മുറി in other common words like തേങ്ങാമുറി = a half of a coconut. A "room" is called മുറി - of course, you 'cut the house' into rooms.

The mallu word for bruise is പരുക്ക് . I don't really know the etymology of that. May be it is related to പരുപരുത്ത, meaning "rough". Perhaps, പരുക്ക് refers to the scar left behind after a bruise. Any ideas?

2 comments:

whoami said...

A cut above the rest! All your blogs did make me think!

Vinod said...

Thank you :-)

-Vinod