Lexember Day (7): Losing

[aldersprig]

lilfluff asked for words for games, and from there for words for winning and losing.


Winning! And losing...

The Calenyena have three sets of words for winning and losing: in games for fun, in games with a prize/in a single battle, and in a large war or conflict.

Pol is an archaic word which once meant to fall. (Falling, as from a goat, is now duddie, from Dudiedah, tumble). It now means to lose shamefully - where you could win something.

Pyuh is for when one suffers small, unimportant loss. We were playing Monopoly and I lost.

Darnietda comes from an old word meaning to slip and fall (into the river) It now means "to lose" in a large way, for instance, "The Bitrani lost the war."

Comments

[clare_dragonfly]

Very interesting! So you would use "pol" for both losing a battle and, say, losing the Tour de France?

[aldersprig]

Yep!

[inventrix]

If I were a teenage sports-anime character and I/my team lost a match in a tournament, do you think I would say darnietda?

(Also, is pyuh a noun or a verb? You defined it as a noun but used it as a verb.)

[aldersprig]

...very likely. It does lend itself to hyperbole.

Verb, good point. /changes definition/

[inventrix]

Awesome. xD (See I was thinking, if it's a loss on the scale of losing a war and becoming subsumed as a nation, then there's probably nothing that ACTUALLY qualifies as a literal use of that word anymore, meaning it probably gets consigned to, as you put it, hyperbole.)

[aldersprig]

...If I ever finish writing the Drunk History, I may ... Maybe you can help me figure out what a Calenyen anime would look like

[inventrix]

*spittake*

I... I doubt they'd have anime... xD

**edit: wait unless you mean an anime about them?

[faeapoclive]

Yess

(how did I sign in as this account? O_o)