fladry

fladry n.pl. a string of flags used to contain or exclude wild animals. Also attributively: fladry line, fladry barrier. Editorial Note: In English fladry tends to be used in the plural only, meaning you can have “some fladry,” very rarely “a fladry,” and never “some fladries.” In French, however, des fladries is acceptable. The word is also used in German and Italian. Etymological Note: According to Polish Scientific Publishers (Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, SA), fladry is the plural of flader, which comes from German. It is not specified which German word, but it’s probably related to flattern ‘to flutter.’ It is probably not related to the Polish flÄ…dry, the plural of flÄ…dra, which according to the Oxford PWN Polish English Dictionary (2002, Oxford University Press) means “1. flounder, flatfish; 2. slattern, slut.” (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

As If the Italian Language Were Already Inside Me

Writer Jhumpa Lahiri grew up speaking Bengali and later English, then became passionately devoted to a third language, Italian. Her book In Other Words: A Memoir (Bookshop|Amazon) is a love letter to Italian and a vivid account of the challenges and...

Stop Meckling Around

Carol in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, recalls her mother using the word meckle to mean “mess around with,” as in stop meckling with your cereal and eat it! Or if a sewing project was too complicated, she’d say there was too much meckling involved...

Recent posts