Kuhnagel

With Kuhnagel ( Swiss German : Chuenagel, also , Unagel, Unigler, Hornagel, Hurnagel, Hurnigel Chunagel ) is in Switzerland a painful slight frostbite on fingers and toes called.

The Kuhnagel (as a verb kuhnageln or chuenagle, unigle, hurnigle and similar) expresses itself as stabbing pain , which is caused by the fact that blood vessels contracted by the cold are insufficiently supplied with blood and are warmed up too quickly.

Etymologically, Kuhnagel has nothing to do with cow or nail , but comes from Agle meaning sting . Chue- is unclear. According to one opinion, it should be a modification of horn (cf. the also documented variant horn nail ) and refer to the fingernail , the meaning would be “nail prick, nail pain”. According to another opinion it is related to bold and thus denotes a reinforcement in the sense of very; the meaning in this case would be "strong stinging".

Web links

• What exactly is a cow nail? , Coop newspaper , issue No. 4 of January 26, 2010 (PDF, 847 kB)
• Christoph Landolt : Chuenagel (Unagel, Unigler, Hornagel, Hurnigel) , « Word History» from February 6, 2013, ed. from the editors of the Swiss Idiotikon.
• Schweizerisches Idiotikon , Vol. I Sp. 151–153, Lemmata unigle , Unigler , hurnigle and Hurnigel , Vol. II Sp. 1628, Lemma horniglen and Vol. IV Sp. 687, Lemmata Unnagel , Hornagel and Chuenagel .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ How can one prevent «Kuhnagel»? K-Tip , January 18, 2006.
2. ↑ Schweizerisches Idiotikon, Vol. I, Col. 152, Lemma Hurnigel with annotation .
3. ↑ Chuenagel - Pain in the fingertips when it is very cold in the dialect lexicon of the Swiss radio DRS .

This article is about a health issue. It is not used for self-diagnosis and does not replace a diagnosis by a doctor. Please note the information on health issues !