Butterland
The word butterland is a term used in seafaring language . Seafarers used it to refer to islands or coasts on the horizon that are simulated by mist or fog and "melt" as soon as the sun shines. The optical illusion was also called driftland . In contrast to the mirage , it is not based on mirages.
The German term is a takeover from Dutch boterland . In the Dutch-speaking area, shaped by seafaring , the metaphor was obvious because of the equally widespread dairy industry . There is also evidence of French terre de beurre and Spanish tierra de manteca , which is also a term for the Canary Island El Hierro and the Canary Islands in general.
The Austrian Jesuit Joseph Stöcklein reported in 1748 in the collection of travel letters he edited, Der Neue Welt-Bott : “ ... after the dinner table was lifted, a number of bourgeois islands could be seen from the Popa [suddenly from the stern]; which astonished us all together; then see no one on the sea chart, nor find what land ought to be in the same area; many would have sworn that it was, so one saw, a real country; but at last it had said that it tended to melt tierra de Manteca (as the seafarers say) that was a butter country, so in the bright and hot sun, including the clouds in which it exists. "
Butterland also meant fertile tracts of land for pasture farming. In a figurative sense, “seeing butterland” was used to denote moral disorientation. “ The big cities are the meeting places of luxury, idleness and moral ruin. City dwellers wander around forever without a compass and constantly see butterland, ”complained the German writer Heinrich Clauren in 1826 .
literature
- Dietmar Bartz: Sailor's language. 2nd edition, Bielefeld 2008, sv
- Friedrich Kluge : Sailor's language. Hall 1911, sv
- Eduard Bobrik: General nautical dictionary with factual explanations. Leipzig 1850, sv, online
Individual evidence
- ^ Eduard Bobrik: General nautical dictionary with explanations. Leipzig 1850, sv , online
- ↑ Arthur Breusing : Nautical about Homeros . In: New yearbooks for classical philology and pedagogy. Volume 133 (1886), p. 83
- ↑ Dietmar Bartz : Sailor's Language. 2nd edition, Bielefeld 2008, sv
- ↑ Denis Diderot and others: Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers . Volume 16, Neufchatel 1765, p. 179 sv terre, la, 4, online
- ↑ Sabino Berthelot: Primera estancia en Tenerife (1820-1830) . Reprinted Madrid 2004, p. 41. - Luis Pancorbo: Abecedario de antropologías . Madrid 2006. p. 87 sv Borondón
- ↑ quoted from: Dietmar Bartz: Seemannsssprache. 2nd edition, Bielefeld 2008, sv
- ^ Ludolf Wienbarg : Holland in the years 1831 and 1832. Part 1, Hamburg 1833, p. 18, online ; Victor Hehn : Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their transition from Asia to Greece. Berlin 1870, p. 79, online
- ↑ Heinrich Clauren (= Karl Gottlieb Samuel Heun): Wilhelm's days of childhood. Dresden, Leipzig 1826, p. 27, online