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Showing posts from April, 2014

Word of the Month: 'ongler'

            At first glance, the entry for ongler seemed to be straightforward. As the verbal form of the noun ungle ‘(finger)-nail’, it is attested in Continental French with the sense of ‘to scratch’. Godefroy has one attestation of the infinitive in a glossary from 1660 (5,603) and a number of examples of the use of the past participle (also attested once in the DMF sub ongler ) illustrate a heraldic use of the term, which can also be found in English – attested once in English as ongled (OED sub ongle , n.) but normally found as unguled (OED sub unguled , adj.) meaning ‘having the hoofs or claws of a different tincture from the body’. The FEW (14,40b sub ungula ) has an attestation of the verb ongler as a v.a. from 1531 glossed as ‘déchirer (qn) avec des ongles de fer (t. de torture)’ and notes the presence of the word in Cotgrave’s dictionary with the sense of ‘griffer avec les ongles’.             However, the article in AND1 gave a very different gloss to the word. The ent