Category: Etymology

Skating in Comenius’s Orbis sensualium pictis

Bev

Comparing what a few editions of Comenius have to say about skating is interesting. Each edition includes Latin and one or more other languages. Let’s start with a later Swedish one.

Woodcut from Johannes Amos Comenius’s Orbis sensualium pictus (1775 reprint)

Pueri exercent se cursu, sive super glaciem 1 diabāthris 2, ubi etiam vehuntur trabis 3

Gossar öfwa sig antingen på isen 1 med skridskor 2, där de ock åka på kälkar 3

Les enfans s’exercent à courir ou sur la glace 1 avec des patens 2, ou à se aussi tirer dans des traineaux 3

(Boys exercise themselves on the ice (1) with skates (2), there they also ride on sleds (3).)

Johannes Amos Comenius’s Orbis sensualium pictus (1775 reprint), no. 136. The English translation is mine.

The 1775 edition is pretty basic. It calls skates diabāthris in Latin, skridskor in Swedish, and patens in French. The text matches German edition from 1669, which says that they ran on the ice with Schlittschuhen (diabáthris in Latin) (p. 279). The English version from 1729 has the boys running in “Scrick Shoes” (diabatris in Latin) (p. 171).

An older Swedish version has a different picture (though it’s the same as the picture in the German & English versions I checked) and adds another skating option.

Woodcut from Johannes Amos Comenius’s Orbis sensualium pictus (1689 reprint)

Pueri exercent se cursu sive super glaciem 1 diabatbris, 2 ubi etiam vehuntur trahis; 3

Gossar öfwa sig i löpande antingen vppå Iisen 1 medh skrikskoor/2 ijsläggior hwarestthe oc åka på kålkar: 3

(Boys exercise themselves by running on the ice (1) with skates/ice-legs where they also ride on sleds (3))

Johannes Amos Comenius’s Orbis sensualium pictus (1689 reprint), p. 281. The English translation is mine.
Detail from p. 281 of Comenius (1689 reprint). “ijsläggior” is crunched into the corner.

In this one, the word for (metal-bladed) skates is skrikskoor. The word for bone skates, isläggior, is also used. The boys played on both, apparently. But the bone skates are stuck in at the side, where there’s just barely enough space to fit them.

It seems like this version of the book was aimed more at country people; skriksko is a dialectal variant of skridsko in Swedish, and bone skates remained in use in rural areas for much longer than they did in the cities.

Meister Eckhart’s magic shoes

Bev

In sermon #15 of the Paradisus anime intelligentis, Meister Eckhart mentions two magic shoes:

Nû schrît, edeliu sêle, ziuch ane dîne schrittschuohe, daz ist verstantnisse und minne.

(Now go, noble soul, put on your walking boots, i.e., understanding and love.)

Sturlese & Vinzent, 250–251

This edition calls the shoes “walking boots”, but Meister Eckhart called them “schrittschuohe” in Middle High German. This is the ancestor of the German word for ice skates! The schritt- is from the Old High German scrītan, which can mean both stride and glide.

Does that mean Eckhart’s magic shoes are really ice skates? Stay tuned…

Reference

Loris Sturlese and Markus Vinzent. 2019. Meister Eckhart, the German Works: 64 Homilies for the Liturgical Year. 1. De tempore. Leuven: Peeters. The sermon in question is Homily 14* (S 90).

Goethe & Klopstock on ice skates

Bev

In his autobiography, Goethe recounts a conversation with his friend Klopstock about whether the German word for an ice skate should be Schlittschuh or Schrittschuh. They

spoke namely in good southern German of Schlittschuhen, which he did not accept as valid because the word does not come from Schlitten, as if one puts on little runners, but rather from Schreiten, that is, one, like the Homeric gods, strides over the sea become land on winged shoes.

Trunz 1948, III.61–62. Translation my own.

The authors of Spuren auf dem Eise have a definite opinion on this:

In some parts of northern Germany, people say Schrittschuh following Klopstock, who discussed it with Goethe in a funny argument. Naturally Goethe was right: the ice skate is modeled on the sled, and the experienced skater does not stride but rather glides or rides and lifts the foot only as much as is unavoidable. Actual Schrittschuhe are just shoes.

Diamantidi et al., 1892, 2. Translation my own.

Actually, they’re both right. Schlittschuh is the descendant of Schrittschuh, which was formed from schreiten back in the days when it meant glide instead of stride. Once the meaning of schreiten shifted, German speakers decided Schlitt- made more sense than Schritt- in an example of folk etymology. There’s a short summary and references in Fowler (2018, 81–83).

References

D. Diamantidi, C. von Korper, and M. Wirth. 1892. Spuren auf dem Eise: Die Entwicklung des Eislaufes auf der Bahn des Wiener Eislauf-Vereines. 2nd ed. Vienna: Alfred Hölder.

G. H. Fowler. 2018. On the Outside Edge: Being Diversions in the History of Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Evanston, IL: Skating History Press.

E. Trunz, ed. 1948. Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bände. Hamburg: C. Wegner.