Grant Barrett said:
In Spanish and French, if you have the equivalent of "a white night," it means you didn't get much sleep. In Sweden, if you have a "white week," it means you didn't drink a drop of alcohol.
And in Japanese, if you're in your "white year", you're 99 years old. If you start with the character for "one hundred" and delete the horizontal stroke at the top (a stroke which, by itself, means "one"), you get the character for "white".
"one hundred":
"one":
"white":
I remember as a child being completely baffled about the term "White Sale." I thought it meant that everything white was being sold at a reduced price.
Ron Draney said:
Grant Barrett said:
In Spanish and French, if you have the equivalent of "a white night," it means you didn't get much sleep. In Sweden, if you have a "white week," it means you didn't drink a drop of alcohol.
And in Japanese, if you're in your "white year", you're 99 years old. If you start with the character for "one hundred" and delete the horizontal stroke at the top (a stroke which, by itself, means "one"), you get the character for "white".
"one hundred":
"one":
"white":
I did not know that, Ron. Nice to have a term for it. And yes, "white sale" used to baffle me, too. When I was very young, I figured it had something to do with January snow.
On the topic of Krunka a "logical" rational for the word. Krunka is Icelandic for "to croak" as in a crow croaks, in Germanic cultures crows/ravens are linked tothe dead especially in battle and croaking is often slang for death, dead or end, the heel of the loaf is the end or death of a loaf Krunka. So logical I doubt this is really it, but wouldn't it be nice. Personally it will always be the heel to me.
THRICE: I'm not sure if this applies to the caller's question directly, but I'll offer it for consideration.
I've read Bible commentaries that explain the Hebrews of ancient times would speak a word twice to emphasize it, and a word spoken three times expressed the ultimate or (as Martha put it on the podcast) the supreme. Examples:
1) In the Old Testament, God is worshiped by angels crying, "Holy, holy, holy," meaning He is supremely holy, the ultimate in holiness. (By the way, I'm told that God is not thrice-described with any other adjective. I haven't checked that out for myself, but I can't think of any passage in the Bible to dispute that claim.)
2) In the New Testament, some sayings of Jesus begin (using King James language), "Verily, verily. . ." [in more modern English, "Truly, truly . . ."]. In doing so, He was emphasizing a point, conveying a meaning something like, "This is particularly important, so pay careful attention!" (In comparison/contrast, the apostle Paul in his letters sometimes used "This is a trustworthy saying" to bring similar emphasis, that is, to bring out statements of eternal truth that were reliable above and beyond any earthly circumstances.)
3) Also in the New Testament, when the apostle Paul (definitely a Jew) prayed three times that his "thorn in the flesh" be removed, the contemporary Jewish mind would have interpreted "three times" as a description of extreme, exhaustive, absolute maximum effort. Similarly, God's response, "My grace is sufficient," to this thrice-prayed plea was His final word and ultimate decision on the subject. Paul recognized that as the end of the discussion, so to speak, and didn't argue any more, but accepted that he would have to live with the "thorny" condition (whatever it was).