Monday, June 3, 2013

Detail #41: A lexical item

The verb used to denote smoking tobacco (or other similar things) varies a bit between languages. Swedish uses a verb derived from 'smoke' (rök röka, but compare the verb used for fires and other things from which smoke is emitted: ryka). Finnish uses the verb for 'to burn' (polttaa), English uses a zero-derived verb smoke. Albanian, apparently, uses a verb that also denotes drinking

Considering the importance of the lips in smoking, I figure some kind of detransitivized or dereciprocalized version of kiss reasonably could be used as well in some language - maybe especially so if smoking is a ritualized practice in the culture.

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