Wednesday, September 19, 2012

kourkouti vs. kourkoutas

Somebody explain to me why the Cypriot endemic lizard Laudakia stellio cypriaca is called a kourkoutAs, only one letter away from the Greek word for batter (for frying), kourkOUti.


1 comment:

  1. Oh, one of the promises (premises?) of my blog, one that I keep forgetting, is to note the context in which I learn each word. I learned kourkoutas a long time ago just from living in Cyprus--my father poitned out the difference between a kourkoutas and a regular lizard. On the other hand, I learned kourkouti backwards, when Christopher Bakken asked me how to say batter and I didn't know--for an entire year--until I asked Erika Voelzer and she gave me two words, kourkouti and chylos.

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