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plage (PLAHZH) - n., a region, district, country; the beach of a seaside resort; an especially luminous area on the surface of the sun near a sunspot; a quarter of the compass.
This is a complicated snarl to untangle -- all the senses ultimately come from Latin plagia, from Greek plagios, oblique or slanting, but various meanings seem to have entered English at various times. The first given was the first, dating to Middle English (Chaucer writes of the "plages of the north") and seems to have come either directly from Latin or via French. The beach sense traveled through Italian piaggia, beach, to become French plage and so into English in the late 19th century. The astronomic sense seems to be a metaphoric extension derived within English. I have no clear derivation for the compass sense, but of all of these it's the only one with any clear connection to "oblique" (if you look at a compass dial).
And that wraps up another week of 5x5 -- back to the regular mix on Monday.
---L.
This is a complicated snarl to untangle -- all the senses ultimately come from Latin plagia, from Greek plagios, oblique or slanting, but various meanings seem to have entered English at various times. The first given was the first, dating to Middle English (Chaucer writes of the "plages of the north") and seems to have come either directly from Latin or via French. The beach sense traveled through Italian piaggia, beach, to become French plage and so into English in the late 19th century. The astronomic sense seems to be a metaphoric extension derived within English. I have no clear derivation for the compass sense, but of all of these it's the only one with any clear connection to "oblique" (if you look at a compass dial).
And that wraps up another week of 5x5 -- back to the regular mix on Monday.
---L.
