🚀 go-pugleaf

David Mark wrote:
> 
> In article <34d73ed5.334499123@news.clark.net>,
> Harlan Messinger <gusty@clark.net@remove.this.part.before.sending> wrote:
> >"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.com> wrote:
> >
> >>J. Kanze wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Yes.  In the case of coastal "etang", I would probably use the word
> >>> lagune in English, but certainly not pond.  I've always associated the
> >>> word with stagner (English stagnate), which would associate it with
> >>> water that wasn't moving: a pond as opposed to a river, but a lagune as
> >>> opposed to a sea with tides (except that the Mediteranean doesn't have
> >>> tides, at least to speak of).
> >>>
> >>
> >>In English it's "lagoon", borrowed from French or Italian in the later
> >>17th century (first attestation 1673). It's curious that the spelling
> >>didn't come in with the word. Is there maybe something Celtic it got
> >>attracted to?
> >
> >Might it be an incorrect analogy with "balloon", "saloon", "doubloon"?
> 
> Another part of the puzzle is, if it came from French, why is "lagoon" in
> English now used for two rather different kinds of features, the tropical
> lagoon inside the coar reef, and the coastal lagoons formed when a bar closes
> off a bay.  Whereas I understand that modern French uses "lagune" only
> for the tropical coral kind.  So, did the usage broaden as it came into
> english, or has it narrowed in French since 1673?  Or, did it come from
> Italian?  Etymologically, 'lagune' seems obviously to come from the
> old Indoeuropean lac/lake/loch root for a water body, and 'etang' is from
> the same root as 'stagnant'.
> 
> David Mark
> dmark@geog.buffalo.edu


This is confusing enough already, but I thought I'd point out that there 
is another French word, "lagon". My Petit Robert says its an 18th century 
borrowing from Spanish lag�n. If this were the immediate source of 
the English word, it would better account for both pronunciation and 
spelling (compare dragoon, cocoon, etc.). The Robert entries for the two 
French words are interesting -- it looks like one of those pairs of words 
that lexicographers feel ought to have some clear difference of meaning, 
but where usage is just hopelessly inconsistent:


LAGON   1. Petit lac d'eau sal�e, lagune peu profonde entre la terre et 
un r�cif corallien, par les br�ches duquel p�n�tre la mar�e.
	2. (Abusiv) Lagune centrale d'un atoll.

LAGUNE	1. Etendue d'eau de mer, comprise entre la terre ferme et un 
cordon littoral (lido), g�n�ralement perc� de passes (graus).
	2. Etendue d'eau central d'un atoll (parfois confondu avec 
		lagon).


So: The water inside a coastal sand-bar (as at Venice) is a lagune.
    The water inside a fringing coral reef is a lagon (but the definition	
	  describes it as a "shallow lagune"!).
    And the water surrounded by an atoll is either a lagune or a lagon, 
	though Robert judges the latter to be incorrect.

On with the fun!

Ross Clark