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Friday 26 January 2018

Word To Use Today: nogging.

They don't have nogging in Scotland and New Zealand. There they have dwang*.

They're both lovely words, but they could hardly be more different: the warmth and comfort of nogging opposed to the racy, almost extra-terrestrial dwang.

What are they? 

They can be the short horizontal bits of wood that go to make up a section of the frame of a building, or else they can be the brickwork that fills the gaps between the wooden bits of a half-timbered house.

Stuff like this:

File:Kilbarchan Scout Hall, Barn Green, Kilbarchan - geograph.org.uk - 961784.jpg
Kilbarchan Scout Hall. The nogging is just being fitted. Photo by scott tennant

and this:



and this:

Image result for wiki commons dwang

What do you think is best for its job?  Nogging or dwang?

Personally, it'd break my heart to have to do without either of them.

Word To Use Today: nogging (or dwang). A nog is a block of wood, perhaps from the Middle English knagge, a peg. The Dutch word dwang means force.

*Except around Auckland, where they have noggin

They don't have nogging in America, either: there it's blocking, which is a perfectly good word, if not so picturesque.


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