this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
752 points (97.4% liked)
memes
10450 readers
4188 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The german word for aeroplane is similar, "Flugzeug" directly translates to "flying thing". Helicopter is also fun, "Hubschrauber" translates to "lifting screwer".
I don't think it means "thing", but rather "Gerät" as in 2 c):
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Zeug
It evolved from a word for "pulling"
I guess for "Flugzeug", 'device' works better but I don't think I have ever thought about it in that way. From my experience usage usually goes more like this: "Pack dein Zeug zusammen wir gehen weiter." which I think best translates to 'Stuff' or 'things'. Zeug is an interesting word though. It is also used for the harness of a draft animal ("sich ins Zeug legen"), it's bridle ("Zaumzeug"), bed linen ("Bettzeug"), work tools ("Werkzeug") , or as a word for nonsense ("red kein dummes Zeug"). I would say it started, as you said, as a word for device but became a slightly negative word for 'Stuff'.
Not to be confused with Hubschraubär.
Now I am curious as to what the Chinese characters in their word for helicopter mean, since panda is "bear cat," owl is "cat headed eagle," and peacock is "thunder chicken," IIRC.