{"id":17667,"date":"2018-11-18T15:49:30","date_gmt":"2018-11-18T23:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=17667"},"modified":"2018-11-18T15:55:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-18T23:55:08","slug":"gneiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2018\/11\/18\/gneiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Gneiss"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Gneiss<\/i> is one of those words that I have a hard time not making jokes about.<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019m in the midst of labeling my photos from a 2014 trip to the British Museum. In most cases, I took a photo of a piece of art and then took a photo of the nearby explanatory card, but in a few cases, I skipped the art and only photographed the text. In particular, I just came across a photo of an info card that says:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Gneiss sphinx of Ammenemes IV<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

Turns out it\u2019s nearly impossible for me to read that text without thinking something like Gneiss sphinx you got there. Wouldn\u2019t want something to \u2026 happen<\/em> to it<\/i>.<\/p>\r\n

Anyway, that got me wondering about the etymology of gneiss<\/i>; turns out it\u2019s from German. Its lineage includes Middle High German gneiste<\/i>, meaning \u201cspark,\u201d and it\u2019s related to Old English f\u0233rgn\u0101st<\/i>, also meaning \u201cspark.\u201d F\u0233rgn\u0101st! What a great word. It sounds to me like the name of a Norse frost giant or something. \u2026Yeah, okay, I suppose it would be more appropriate for a fire giant.<\/p>\r\n

(Surprisingly, gneiste<\/i> doesn\u2019t appear to be related to ignite<\/i>, reminding me again that etymology by sound is not sound etymology.)<\/p>\r\n

While I\u2019m here, I might as well mention that Wikipedia tells me that orthogneiss<\/i> is \u201cgneiss derived from igneous rock.\u201d As in:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n
\r\n

\u2026To say that for destruction ice<\/p>\r\n

Is orthogneiss<\/p>\r\n

And would suffice.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

(Hmm. That would\u2019ve been funnier if I hadn\u2019t misremembered the original line<\/a>; turns out that it\u2019s \u201cIs also great,\u201d not \u201cIs also nice.\u201d Oh, well.)<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,29,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology","category-puns","category-specific-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17667"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17674,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17667\/revisions\/17674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}