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anorak & parka
Sep. 26th, 2025 08:06 amanorak (AN-uh-rak, AH-nuh-rahk) - n., a heavy weatherproof garment with a hood, traditionally a pullover, now often closing in front; (UK, slang) a trainspotter or other nerdy, socially awkward person.
parka (PAR-kuh) - n., a heavy weatherproof garment with a hood, traditionally a pullover, now often closing in front.
A traditional Iniut sealskin anorak:
_Inuit.JPG/400px-Parka_(Kamleika)_Inuit.JPG)
Thanks, WikiMedia!
In modern usage, more or less synonyms, though a heavy jacket long enough to cover the hips is more likely to be an anorak while a shorter one is more likely to be a parka. Among traditional Arctic peoples, the difference was basically geographical: anorak (which English took on in the 1920s) is from Greenlandic name for the garment, annoraaq, with a root sense of clothing (the Inuktitut cognate annoraat, still means any sort of clothing), while parka (which English took on in the 1780s; ETA or possibly a few decades earlier, dictionaries have an unusually wide spread on this) is from Aleut, the indigenous people of the entire Aleutian Islands, both in Alaska and Russia, and the Alaskan Peninsula. [Sidebar: Aleut name for that last, Alaxsxa, is the origin of the state name Alaska.] The Aleuts got the word from Russian па́рка, who got it from Tundra Nenets, the Uralic language of the peoples of the coastal tundra just east of the Ural Mountains (so the Ob River delta and vicinity) -- the Finnish cognate parka means swaddling clothes.
And that wraps up a week of words from the Inuit, Aleut, and Yupik peoples (formerly known collectively as Eskimo). More random words next week, before moving south for other Indigenous words.
---L.
parka (PAR-kuh) - n., a heavy weatherproof garment with a hood, traditionally a pullover, now often closing in front.
A traditional Iniut sealskin anorak:
Thanks, WikiMedia!
In modern usage, more or less synonyms, though a heavy jacket long enough to cover the hips is more likely to be an anorak while a shorter one is more likely to be a parka. Among traditional Arctic peoples, the difference was basically geographical: anorak (which English took on in the 1920s) is from Greenlandic name for the garment, annoraaq, with a root sense of clothing (the Inuktitut cognate annoraat, still means any sort of clothing), while parka (which English took on in the 1780s; ETA or possibly a few decades earlier, dictionaries have an unusually wide spread on this) is from Aleut, the indigenous people of the entire Aleutian Islands, both in Alaska and Russia, and the Alaskan Peninsula. [Sidebar: Aleut name for that last, Alaxsxa, is the origin of the state name Alaska.] The Aleuts got the word from Russian па́рка, who got it from Tundra Nenets, the Uralic language of the peoples of the coastal tundra just east of the Ural Mountains (so the Ob River delta and vicinity) -- the Finnish cognate parka means swaddling clothes.
And that wraps up a week of words from the Inuit, Aleut, and Yupik peoples (formerly known collectively as Eskimo). More random words next week, before moving south for other Indigenous words.
---L.
_Inuit.JPG){kind=link}