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tattoo (ta-TOO) - n., a permanent mark or design on the skin made by pricking and ingraining an indelible pigment; the process of making such a mark. v., to make a tattoo.
Also a signal on a drum, bugle, or trumpet at night, for soldiers or sailors to go to their quarters, but that's from Dutch and can be ignored for this theme. This was originally spelled was tattow, reflecting that in some Polynesian languages, such as Tahitian and Samoan, the word is tatau, but the word was later reimported from another Polynesian language, such as Marquesan, where the final vowel had shifted to tatu. The root meaning in Proto-Oceanic was the wingbone of a flying fox, which was apparently a common tool for tattooing -- a meaning that survived in a couple languages. [Sidebar: TIL Samoan is the most widely spoken Polynesian language, with around 430,000 native speakers, around half of which live in the Samoan Islands.]
---L.
Also a signal on a drum, bugle, or trumpet at night, for soldiers or sailors to go to their quarters, but that's from Dutch and can be ignored for this theme. This was originally spelled was tattow, reflecting that in some Polynesian languages, such as Tahitian and Samoan, the word is tatau, but the word was later reimported from another Polynesian language, such as Marquesan, where the final vowel had shifted to tatu. The root meaning in Proto-Oceanic was the wingbone of a flying fox, which was apparently a common tool for tattooing -- a meaning that survived in a couple languages. [Sidebar: TIL Samoan is the most widely spoken Polynesian language, with around 430,000 native speakers, around half of which live in the Samoan Islands.]
---L.
