Sleigh

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Dr. Goodword
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Sleigh

Postby Dr. Goodword » Wed Dec 24, 2014 2:05 am

• sleigh •


Pronunciation: slay • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, Verb

Meaning: 1. (Noun) A light carriage on narrow runners pulled by dogs, horses, or in very northern climes, reindeer. 2. (Verb) To ride in a sleigh.

Notes: English has several words for vehicles that slide across snow or ice. A sled is usually a small toy for sliding down hills, though a bobsled can accommodate four or more people. A sledge is a work sleigh, heavily built, pulled by horses or oxen over the snow or over snowless ground. The sleigh is a light, festive vehicle that we associate with happy times around Christmas.

Image

In Play: We are approaching that time of the year when a most famous "miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer" will sail across the rooftops of our children's imaginations, "with a little old driver, so lively and quick, [they will all know] in a moment it must be St. Nick." For a showroom of sleighs built in the United States, click here.

Word History: The reason sled and sleigh are so similar is that they come from the same source. This good holiday word is another one that English borrowed twice from the same language: Dutch slede, slee "sleigh", only we assigned the two words different meanings. All the Germanic languages have very similar words meaning either "sleigh" or "sled": Norwegian slede, Swedish släde, Danish slæde, German Schlitten. They are all remindful of English slide, which is where they all come from—the local word for "slide". The spelling? If we borrowed this word from Dutch slee, why to we spell it sleigh? It has been spelled slay and sley in the past, but English speakers love letters that are no more than decorative curlicues, and what better place for decorative curlicues than on the word for sleighs?
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Slava
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Re: Sleigh

Postby Slava » Sun Dec 10, 2023 8:36 am

The sleigh link above appears to be dead, so here are a couple of others that currently work:

Nyack Sleighs
Popular Sleighs
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

bbeeton
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Re: Sleigh

Postby bbeeton » Sun Dec 10, 2023 1:26 pm

Another seasonal reference is "a one-horse open sleigh", although that song, "Jingle Bells", has nothing to do with Christmas, and only gained that association later.

But the phrase "one horse ... sleigh" conjures up the quite unrelated "The One Hoss Shay" by Oliver Wendell Holmes. A "shay" is also an open conveyance, but one that runs on wheels. "Shay" is from "chaise", which was apparently interpreted by non-Francophones to be plural. But the story told by the poem is one I'd hope to emulate -- prevail in fine running order for a good long time, and then fall apart totally all at once. (Read it at https://grg.org/OneHossShay.htm.)

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Dr. Goodword
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Re: Sleigh

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sun Dec 10, 2023 4:13 pm

The sleigh link above appears to be dead, so here are a couple of others that currently work:
Thanks, Slava. Everything now should be fixed.

--RB
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