sastruga

[prettygoodword]

sastruga or zastruga (SAS-truh-guh, sa-STROO-guh) - n., a sharp, irregular ridge in snow formed by wind.


Usually seen only in the plural form, sastrugi, and according to some sources, the Russian origin (zastrugi, grooves) is a collective without a singular form, but others give -ga as the singular form in Russian as well. (No doubt someone here knows enough of the language to shed some insight.) The initial s- comes from transmission through German.

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to hear more about the form(s), too. OED2 Suppl. (1982) gives "sastruga" as the lemma, from "German sastruga, < dialect Russian zastrúga small ridge, furrow," ultimately from "strug plane." The intermediary form is a verb meaning to smooth/plane, but the web page either messes up the verb's final letter or spells it requiring a font this computer doesn't have (despite having been set up to support a variety of Unicode glyphs).

[med_cat]

Zastruga is singluar, zastrugi is plural.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

So the source claiming no singular was flat-out wrong -- gotcha. Thanks!

---L.

[med_cat]

No problem and yes, it's one of the ways of forming the plural in Russian, with certain words.

Another example is beluga (singular) and belugi (plural)

:)

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[med_cat]

Anytime ;)