A to Z Challenge 2013

Sunday, April 15, 2012

M is for Monotroch

Since Saturday was a busy day for me, I am putting up my M post on Sunday.  And today's word is Moulin, which means:

A shaft in a glacier caused by water running down a crack


It just goes to show you that there is a word for everything.  Can you imagine the scientist who came up with this one?  Here they are clambering over the ice and they discover this hole.  Maybe they fell down through the hole and Moulin is the moaning sound they made while they lay at the bottom of the shaft.  Then while they lay there waiting for someone to save them, they had time to watch the water slowly erode the ice more and more.

Okay, it's a bit of a stretch but its as good a guess as any.  Which brings me to another topic.  I often wonder how some words are created.  After all, not all words are based on some linguistic root word from Latin or Greek.  There's probably a reason for most of them, but sometimes I think people just randomly toss some syllables together and there you have it - a new word.

Anyone else have a thought about the word Moulin?

5 comments:

Laura S. said...

Hello, Eric! I'm sure that's what William Shakespeare did. He made up thousands of words, and he probably didn't spend too much time looking up root and suffix meanings. Slapping a bunch of syllables together is way more fun!

Hope you're having a great weekend and happy A to Z!!

Patricia Stoltey said...

In French, doesn't moulin mean mill, as in Moulin Rouge? It's a cool sounding word, no matter what language it's in.

See you later on my A to Zing tour.

Rick Daley said...

I've heard Eskimos have over 100 words for snow. This makes me think of the scene from Ice Age where they slide through the glacier, that looked like fun!

thelmaz said...

My granddaughter made up a new word, which she told me was in the latest edition of the dictionary. We always laugh about it.

Stopping by from the Challenge.

Anonymous said...

I would never have matched this word with its definition.