Re:Uncleftish Beholding
by ThePadawan on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @02:19AM
(#19206248)
As a German ESL student, I found it hard to believe that "foodstuff" and its plural was a genuine expression and not a prank. Seems so much more German than Lebensmittel is ("Survival/Life tool/gear").
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"Lebensmittel" more represents something like "Life implement" or "means of life".
Edit: Conceptually it maps almost exactly to Latin "nutrimentum", and hence, English "nourishment".
As such, I supposed we could construct some neo-latin from it to more closely approximate it, such as vitimentum or rather vitalimentum - but if you look closely at vitalimentum, you'll notice it contains "alimentum" as a substring, and, well:
Or just use victualia (from late Latin), which appears to be derived from victus (nourishment) and vīvō (live, survive).
In English this corresponds to victuals, and in German Viktualien of course¹.
1: E.g., as used in the name of Munich's Viktualienmarkt market square.
Have you come across the word "nutmeat", meaning the edible part of a nut? It's from two words with Germanic roots and thus might give you a similar feeling.
Re:Uncleftish Beholding
by ThePadawan on Thursday February 21, 2019 @01:50AM
(#19215060)
Now, I hadn't, and wow!
Re:Uncleftish Beholding
by LiquidInsect on Wednesday February 20, 2019 @06:27PM
(#19213139)
Conversely, I felt the same way about "flugzeug", "spielzeug", "werkzeug" etc.
Re:Uncleftish Beholding
by ThePadawan on Thursday February 21, 2019 @04:16AM
(#19215604)
Vice versa, you can confuse German speakers by claiming that you drink liquids out of a rock (German: "Stein").