maringouin
Dec. 15th, 2021 07:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordmaringouin (mar-uhn-GWAN, French ma-ran-GWAN) - n., (Louisiana) a mosquito, esp. large swamp mosquito.
Man, this was a rabbit hole. Clearly from French, where the word can mean any large biting insect and in Cajun French specifically means large mosquito, but where did that come from? The earlier spelling was marigoin, which was allegedly from a Tupi language, supposedly in the form mbarigui or marui(m), but the word first appeared in French over fifty years before France had a colony in a Tupi-language-speaking area of South America. So, yeah. No pic because not a birb and not cute.
---L.
Man, this was a rabbit hole. Clearly from French, where the word can mean any large biting insect and in Cajun French specifically means large mosquito, but where did that come from? The earlier spelling was marigoin, which was allegedly from a Tupi language, supposedly in the form mbarigui or marui(m), but the word first appeared in French over fifty years before France had a colony in a Tupi-language-speaking area of South America. So, yeah. No pic because not a birb and not cute.
---L.
