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As a German ESL student, I found it hard to believe that "foodstuff" and its plural was a genuine expression and not a prank. Seems so much more German than Leb
by ThePadawan 8y ago
As a German ESL student, I found it hard to believe that "foodstuff" and its plural was a genuine expression and not a prank. Seems so much more German than Lebensmittel is ("Survival/Life tool/gear").
- no_identd 8y ago"Lebensmittel" more represents something like "Life implement" or "means of life". Edit: Conceptually it maps almost exactly to Latin "nutrimentum", and hence, English "nourishment". As such, I supposed we could construct some neo-latin from it to more closely approximate it, such as vitimentum or rather vitalimentum - but if you look closely at vitalimentum, you'll notice it contains "alimentum" as a substring, and, well: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aliment#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aliment#Etymology
- Freak_NL 8y agoOr just use victualia (from late Latin), which appears to be derived from victus (nourishment) and vīvō (live, survive). In English this corresponds to victuals, and in German Viktualien of course¹. 1: E.g., as used in the name of Munich's Viktualienmarkt market square.
- andrewem 8y agoHave you come across the word "nutmeat", meaning the edible part of a nut? It's from two words with Germanic roots and thus might give you a similar feeling. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/nutmeat https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/nutmeat
- ThePadawan 8y agoNow, I hadn't, and wow!
- LiquidInsect 8y agoConversely, I felt the same way about "flugzeug", "spielzeug", "werkzeug" etc.
- ThePadawan 8y agoVice versa, you can confuse German speakers by claiming that you drink liquids out of a rock (German: "Stein").