3 ms·
> Across town, however, there’s another commemoration of a sort — an outlet store for cookies that carry the name “Leibniz” in his honor: https://blog.stephenwo
by lqet 7y ago
> Across town, however, there’s another commemoration of a sort — an outlet store for cookies that carry the name “Leibniz” in his honor: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2013/05/35-large-a.png https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2013/05/35-larg...
That's not the whole story: Leibniz was asked once to develop military rations, and suggested to use zwieback (rusk?). That's why Bahlsen named his biscuits "Leibniz Keks". And "keks", which is now a standard word in German for biscuits, is just a phonetic spelling of English "cakes". Interestingly, "keks" is singular, and the plural is "kekse". There was actually a discussion at the beginning of the 20th century (when the word was accepted to enter the Duden dictionary) that the correct singular version should be "kek" (phonetic spelling of "cake").
- RmDen 7y agoSame in Croatia.. keks = biscuit (singular)
- krobbn 7y agoScandinavian countries as well. Norwegian = Kjeks Danish = Kiks Swedish = Kex (Because swedes are weird)
- romwell 7y ago>Interestingly, "keks" is singular Same thing in Russian. More interestingly, it also happened with other loanwords, even with newer ones: e.g. * бакс = bucks (a dollar) -> plural баксы * памперс = pampers (diaper, genericized) -> plural памперсы * чипс = chips (potato chip) -> plural чипсы My guess is that the word was loaned in its plural form, that form was modified to have the "right" ending, and a singular was backformed from that. Like boots -> бутсы (no singular form.. yet).