A good thought Thursday to you and yours.

Pickles are a favorite of Ms. Mary. As a child, she loved to drink the pickle juice when the pickles themselves were munched and gone. Those pickles were homemade in a vinegar brine (salt) solution.

What is vinegar?

The word vinegar is from the old French word “vinaigre” which means sour wine. Because vinegar and vinaigre are essentially the same words in English and French, vinegar is a “calque.” As we saw yesterday with “Wednesday,” a calque is a direct loan translation of the foreign word into English. The internal structure of the borrowed word is maintained (they look pretty much the same) with slight adjustments to the word units (morphemes) to accommodate the native tongue. For example “ar” rather than “re” works better in English, but vinegar and vinaigre pretty much sound the same either way. So, when you say vinegar, you are speaking English and French all at the same time.

I like “calque” and deem it the new word of this week.

Chemically and not linguistically, vinegar is a liquid composed mainly of acetic acid (CH3CO2H, for the chemists among us — I studied chemistry for a number of  years) and water (H2O — we should all know this one). Because acetic acid is an acid and corrosive, which means it can burn you, most vinegars in household use are about 5% acetic acid and 95% water or H2O. The government of Canada limits the acetic acid of vinegars to between 4.1% and 12.3%. Be very careful with the stronger vinegars.

Vinegar is a good cleaning agent and has many uses. Ask your parents before sloshing it about — always remember it is an acid, which makes it a potentially dangerous chemical, especially if used in the wrong location or at the wrong strength. Vinegar also has a number of health applications, such as a material to help kill bad bacteria that may cause infections and as an aid to digestion and metabolism. Be careful here and get the advice of your doctor before engaging in personal use. A little vinegar on your food or a pickle on your way is probably all you need. Mary drank the pickle juice and she’s doing very nicely, but she has a great love for pickles which you might not share. So, again, first run any pickle-juice drinking by your parents — always a good and judicious approach to maintaining a healthy relationship.

Keep your eyes open for calques, enjoy a pickle today and watch the vinegar,

Grandpa Jim