komkommertijd--cucumber, part 2

No, I am not about to start confessing my ignorance of foreign words--or maybe I should just confess straight out that I am ignorant of them. The number of them of which I'm not ignorant, is, statistically speaking, too small to count.

But in a recent post on the humble or not so humble cucumber, the multilingual Peter Rozovsky managed to fit in a Dutch cucumber joke. I was very surprised, then to find yet another reference to the Dutch komkommer, since I read pretty much exclusively in English. I happened to be reading a very interesting article in The Paris Review by Lydia Davis on the art of translation in general and her task of translating Madame Bovary in particular. I can't link to the article, but I'm happy to report that I think most of it was done as a series of blog posts here . (You'd start at the bottom with the oldest entry.)

Anyway, I can't quite remember the context since the book she is discussing is written in French but in talking about the difficulties of translation, she mentions komkommertijd, which in Dutch literally means 'cucumber time'. To just translate it as 'cucumber time', though, would not reveal its meaning. Davis says that it is the time in August when everyone is away and not much work gets done. It is also the time when Dutch farmers harvest cucumbers. The Dutch would understand the references to both in the word, while most of us wouldn't have a clue of either. How would you get that across?

cucumbersome

No, that is not a stutter in the machine. Both Peter Rozovsky and Sean Patrick Reardon found themselves wondering how 'cucumber' might fit into all the cumbersome madness of the post before and frankly it crossed my mind as well. And then Peter beat me to the draw on the pun--who'd have thought it?--so there you go. I should probably let them write this post themselves.

So is cucumber in any way related to cumbersome, encumber or any of that family?

I haven't looked yet, but my guess is no--it will turn out to be sheer coincidence. Wagers, ladies and gents?


***

Correct! Cucumber has apparently always stood for the simple cucumber. It is a single source with many variants as it passed from the Latin, which was cucumerem or cucumis, which is suspected to be from an even earlier Mediterranean language. Out of this we have the Old French cocombre (which lent English that 'b')  and modern French concombre. Apparently the French still want a little more distinction from the English. And we've got the Italian cocomero, the Spanish cohombro and the Portuguese cogombro. Do you ever get the feeling that when it comes to words, people  can't just leave well enough alone?

African Horned cucumber

As a matter of fact, Old English had a perfectly good word for them, which was eorþæppla, or earth-apple. Not that they look all that much like apples to me, but still. Maybe they were rounder back in the day. The Brits kind of took their own back after awhile, though, when, in the 17th century, they  began referring to them as Cowcumbers. Which I kind of like, actually.

The online etymology dictionary waxes on uncharacteristically, telling us that cucumbers (or probably more likely, cowcumbers) were planted at Jamestown in 1609. And we even get a bit of scientific trivia. The phrase 'cool as a  cucumber'  which dates back to at least 1732, was apparently only finally confirmed in 1970, when it was proved that on a hot day in the field, a cucumber was 20% cooler inside than out.

Why no one ever thought to stick a thermometer in one before this, I don't know. 

This would be about time for a nice cucumber salad recipe, but the truth is, I'm not all that crazy about those little earth apples (they are actually from the gourd family).  Until they're pickles, anyway. Feel free, however, to post a good recipe below.                 

Oh yeah, and I forgot all about sea cucumbers. But that's probably another story...