stampede

[billkilpatrick]

anyone care to speculate on the origin of the word "stampede" being an ironic appreciation for what revelers got up to during the medieval dance step "estampie?"

in the same vein, wikipedia describes the word "fiasco" - in english sense - as "an absolute, abject or utterly humiliating failure" - while in italian its literal meaning is a bulb shaped wine bottle, set into a straw nest - with the implied meaning of "absolute, abject or utterly humiliating" ... bacchanal.

[vkioulaphides]

To my knowledge, Bill, fiasco comes from the phrase far fiasco, literally "to make a bottle". Its origin is shop-talk among the famed glass-blowers of Murano et alii of Northern Italy. The point is that precious glassware is made (as you know) by blowing into the molten matter via a long, metal tube, with EXTREME care not to allow for any bubbles to form, any irregularities to creep in.

If you did fail at making such a precious piece of glassware, all your product was good for was... far fiasco, to make a lowly bottle out of your imperfectly blown glass, a vessel for some liquid, for quotidian use. Hence its semantic association with failure. This, at least, to the best of my knowledge. Far fiasco is, in the American sense, "to blow it". (This, in terms of equivalence, not of a strict, linguistic parallel.)

Further back, the Greek φλάσκα / φλασκί (fláska / flaskí) means "gourd", in common, current parlance also the various squash-like, pumpkin-like plants that have been converted to vessels, once dried up and hollowed out, since time immemorial. There are abundant cognates in European languages, e.g. Flasche in German, vles in Dutch, fiasco of course in Italian— I am sure there are plenty more in languages I am not aware of.

I'll leave stampedes for others to explain. I experience them on a daily basis, each and every time I get into or out of the NYC subway.

Cheers,

Victor

[brunello97]

Bill, I'm the cowboy who never saw a cow. Never roped a steer 'cause I don't know how. And I sure ain't fixin' to start in now. Yippee i oh ti-ay. But my hunch is that stampede probable came from the Spanish 'estampido', which may have its own connection to the Italian.... Many of our cowpokey terms seem to have some kind of Vaquero-id origin. But I learned Spanish watching dubbed Japanese monster movies on Univision when I was a kid so who knows how reliable that is. (Or my dancing.)

Victor, the far fiasco 'planation was amazing.

Mick

[vkioulaphides]

*bow* Thanks, Mick! It is, after all, also an English word:

flask |flask|
noun
a container or bottle, in particular
• a narrow-necked glass container, typically conical or spherical, used in a laboratory to hold reagents or samples.
• a metal container for storing a small amount of liquor, typically to be carried in one's pocket : his silver flask of brandy.
• a narrow-necked bulbous glass container, typically with a covering of wickerwork, for storing wine or oil.
• a small glass bottle for perfume.
• a vacuum flask.
• the contents of any of these containers : a flask of coffee.
• historical short for powder flask .
ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [cask] ): from medieval Latin flasca. From the mid 16th cent. the word denoted a case of horn, leather, or metal for carrying gunpowder. The sense [glass container] (late 17th cent.) was influenced by Italian fiasco, from medieval Latin flasco. Compare with flagon .

For a visual image of what φλασκί would connote in Greek:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_S1OtE7SOl_...922;Ι.php

That is, the "natural" flask, the hollowed-out gourd.

My hunch is that this is a medieval, Latinate import into Venetian-era Greek. But that is for career linguists, like my sister, to argue; I'm but a lowly tunesmith...

Cheers,

Victor