These recent days have been marked by the coronavirus disease – sometimes verging on the scaremongering. This has also brought on some travel restrictions, which have made me rethink how we often take for granted that we can travel freely and easily between major cities. Major cities like Milan and New York, for example.
After learning that a couple of US legacy airlines have chosen to stop serving Milan as a consequence of the virus spread, and while reading a whole host of soundbites from either side of the Atlantic, two homophones have emerged to form a – quite personal – mental connection between these two cities.
As I was reading an Italian newspaper earlier today, I was bemused to learn that churchgoers should steer clear of stoups – or acquasantiere in Italian – to avoid catching the dreaded virus. I was bemused because I thought this practice was a thing of the past. Who in their right mind – I pondered – would want to dip their hands in a communal washbowl regardless of any potential virus lurking in these shallow hallowed waters?
The sound of this rarely spoken word instantly brought me to its homophone (though not a homograph): the omnipresent New York stoop.
So where did these two words originate from? Are they somehow related? They both share Germanic roots: stoup stems from the old Norse and Icelandic meaning flagon or beverage container. By contrast, stoop comes from Dutch steop meaning step. Interestingly, stoop also means pitcher or jar in some southern Dutch and Flemish dialects.