I’ve developed a fascination with croquet, of late. And reading all the articles I can get my hands on, I repeatedly come across this fact:
“Poor people in the southern part of France played an outdoor game that involved using mallets or sticks to knock balls through hoops in order to hit a peg on the other side. The game was called “paille maille,” which means “ball and mallet” in English.”
After reading that for the umpteenth time, and just for giggles, I ran it through a couple of online translators which returned the results as “straw mesh”.
Wikipedia offers this:
However, translating that returns, “handball”. Nothing about mallets.
I realize that language has changed a lot since the 13th century but I have a suspicion that paille maille = ball and mallet is just repeating earlier articles. I have no dire need to know but I am curious…
Any French dopers or speakers that can help clarify?
ETA: Factual question - Does the French ‘paille maille’ mean ball and mallet in English?
According to the French Wikipedia paille maille does mean ball and mallet:
Le mot mail vient du latin malleus, en français, maillet. Il est aussi appelé pail-mail ou pale-mail, de pila, boule, et mail, maillet.
The word mail stems from the Latin malleus, in English, mallet (a hammer with a barrel shaped head). The game is also called pail-mail or pale-mail, from pila, ball, and mail, mallet.
Maybe it’s an issue with translators. According to Google translate (French) “Mail” doesn’t translate to mallet either, though googling “malleus Latin translation” does return hammer/mallet.
Not an answer to your question, I’m afraid, but your OP led me to wonder whether ‘paille maille’ was related to ‘pell-mell’. Apparently it’s not, though ‘pell-mell’ does have French etymology.
Just throwing in the fun etymological fact that the (parallel) central London streets Pall Mall and The Mall take their names from the game, which used to be played there. And from there, the term “mall” as a name for a tree-lined promenade entered the English language, as exemplified, among others, by the National Mall in Washington. And from there, the word acquired its new meaning of shopping centre.
I am not sure it is a diminutive, my French is not good enough to settle that. By instinct I would have said that the diminutive of maille is maillette. But that sounds female… but come to think of it, so does maille. And mail (but is it?). Hm. Sorry, don’t know.
Yes. See the article in French Wiktionary, with a reference to the masculine diminutive suffix -et. The article on English Wikipedia points out that the defining criterion of a mallet is not the material it is made of, but that it is smaller than a maul.
My hunch is that the undiminished root might signify a hammer that’s used with both hands, whereas a hammer held in one hand only takes the diminutive form. That’s confusing with croquet, where the mallet is usually played with both hands, but I suppose that there was an additional stage in the etymology of the croquet mallet, which was named after its resemblance to a small wooden single-hand hammer rather than a big massive sledgehammer-type tool.
This is the main usage, but ‘pelote’ is also the ball use in ‘pelote basque’ (jai alai) and the verb ‘peloter’ is a negative term meaning something like ‘fiddle’ or ‘fondle’.
I’m a little more mystified about how ‘paille maille’ became ‘croquet’, which is clearly a French word but is food related - ‘croque’ means ‘bite’. I’m guessing that ‘cricket’ (game) somehow ties in here too ?
They’re related. Both mean ‘a small crook’ i.e. a shepherd’s staff, which is crooked at the end. Croquet from Norman French and cricket from Dutch krik, meaning the same thing. Even though the cricket bat is straightened out now.
