ζουρλομανδύας = straitjacket
The word came up in conversation, and it struck me as odd as the first part – ζουρλο – definitiely isn’t Greek. It isn’t even a word a student would use in a school essay. Apparently, it’s of Venetian origin. The second part – μανδύας – meant a woollen cloak in Ancient Greek. I was expecting something more euphemistic, but ζουρλομανδύας has been a straitjacket since 1893! A crazy-cloak! A nutter-tunic! It lacks the functionality of straitjacket and the elegance of camisole de force.
Ζουρλός means crazy or off one’s head. The standard word for mad is τρελός. (It used to be spelt with a double λλ.) Other synonyms are μουρλός and παλαβός.
In GW 25/2022 I wondered what the ‘katharevousa’ words for volleyball and handball might be. Predictably, χειροσφαίριση is handball (χάντμπολ). Less obviously, perhaps, πετοσφαίριση turns out to be volleyball (βόλεϊ), which, of course, nobody uses. Even less likely to be used in common speech is παράκτια πετοσφαίριση, a 9-syllable monstrosity for beach volley (μπιτς βόλεϊ). If linguistic purists wish to resist the influx of foreign words, they are fighting in vain if they cannot win the syllable count. Ποδόσφαιρο is in common usage today, but would φουτμπόλ be more common if the purists had offered ποδοσφαίριση? Interestingly, when I typed πετοσφαίριση, Word’s auto-correct offered ποδοσφαίριση as an alternative though it does not appear in Babiniotis’s dictionary.