Yup. traditional cycling bibs were always real chamois, frequently one-piece, & worn against the skin (no underwear). I still have one or two in the closet. For many years they’ve been replaced by synthetics.
Well, the pronunciation is like Sham-waa.
it’s originally from a kind of mountain goat of the same name.
Late to the thread, but i have also always pronounced it “shammy”. And chamois shirts, made of cotton but designed to feel like the soft leather, were very popular when i was young.
The European antelope: SHAM-wah
The leather cloth, now more usually made from sheepskin than from chamois skin; SHAM-ee.
Morrison really was a window washer before he made it big. The chamois cloth references his youth, while most of the rest of the song is about his current life and how much he hated the music business.
Of course, he put that into evocative poetry accompanied by stirring music.
I think St. Dominic’s Preview is one of the great albums of rock, Morrison as bard peering deep into the world and singing incantations to his followers.
Oh, and the third line "And I hear blue strains of “No Regredior” probably means “je ne regrette rien,” the lyrics of the Edith Piaf song.
I knew that! Don’t remember where I learned it, but I picked it up somewhere ages ago.
I discovered Van Morrison later in my life. I always knew Brown Eyed Girl. His other work is quite a revelation. Great lyricist and poet.
Anyone that wants a start… get
Van Morrison Still on Top
A nice 2 CD selection of his popular work. 18 Tracks on CD1 and 19 CD2
You can always get his albums later. But everything you might need is on the 2 cd set.
You might want a album just for the vision and story the songs represent. I haven’t bought any yet.
As in “Chamois Chamois Coco Bop”?
Watch the full dance!
Yep, I learned that although the French pronunciation is another thing, in the US, it’s just call “shammy”, for better or worse. Made no sense to me, but try telling that to Des Moines.
Exactly. It’s always been a “shammy” to me. My French language sensibilities say something like “sham-wah,” but nobody says it like that.
The cloth is “SHAM-ee” in British English as well (though the animal is “SHAM-wah”).
This is (mildly) interesting, because one of the characteristics of US English, in contrast to British English, is a tendency to “frenchify” the pronunciation of words taken from French - fillay rather than fillett; garazh rather than garridge, etc. The pronunciation of chamois seems to be an exception to this rule. (But perhaps it’s a rule with many exceptions.)
That explains why Saint Dominic’s Preview and Cleaning Windows are on his hits album.
It confused me because Cd1 track 17 is Saint and track 8 on Cd2 is Cleaning. Thought it was a duplicate until listening closer.
Makes sense that he once had that job.
I know a guy who owns an auto-parts store but is retired from actually working there. He and his wife detail a car or two a week as a sideline. He does the exterior, his wife the interior. My gf has her car done twice a year, $100 a pop, cash only please.
The family business when I was growing up was making signs (everything from sandblasted signs to vinyl truck lettering.) We used “shammies” all the time - the sheepskin ones.
I had no idea until now that “chamois” is that same thing. I would pronounce that cham-WAH.
When I was a very little kid like before I started school, my dad used a chamois to clean the car. I always knew it as a shammy. I don’t think I learned the spelling until high school.
I wonder how those would do on monitors and tv screens.
That is correct for the goat (Rupicapra rupicapra - which is actually an antelope), but the leather is tanned with a special procedure called Sämischgerbung, where Gerbung means tanning, and Sämisch is chamois. That is the German cognate you’re looking for, I believe. This kind of tanning is called in French chamoisage, i.e. chamois-ing. And of course it is pronounced the logical French way in French and “wrong” in English: sham-wah vs. shammy.
I find it funny that the German wikipage says the stuff is used to make mainly traditional Bavarian clothes (Trachten), while the French page says it is mainly used to make the finest gloves. And you know it as a window cleaner or a car washing utensil!
If you look at the picture of the Trachten article you will see the man has a curious brush sticking out of his hat: that is also chamois, but it refers not to the leather but to the hair of the goat (or antelope). And in this case it is called Gamsbart, (goat’s beard, the goat being of the species Rupicapra rupicapra).
It’s confusing. In my original post, I had “antelope”, but after looking at the Wikipedia page, I decided “goat” is the better term in English. The species is more closely related to other goats than to antelopes. And the English word “antelope” is basically a catch-all for members of Bovidae that don’t look like cattle, goats, or sheep.
Oh, that is interesting. I’m having trouble finding “Sämisch” in online dictionaries; is it a recent loan? German has apparently borrowed the French word for the cloth, while keeping the original Germanic word for the animal.
Shammy. By the time I was old enough to know what they are, I already preferred the synthetic ones.
As far as I know, they’re really best for drying and screens aren’t really a soap & water wash thing.