Sõle (Sõlg)

Brooch, pin, ouch (not an onomatopoeic consequence of mishandling, ‘ouch’ is derived from French, nouche, the socket of a precious stone, later the stone itself, by a linguistic process called rebracketing. Rebracketing comes in two flavors: agglutination, familiar to Shakespeare groupies where, for example ‘an uncle’ shifts to ‘a nuncle’, and deglutination, transforming the hypothetical English ‘a norange’ to ‘an orange’ although deriving ultimately from Persian nāranğ via Venetian naranza to Italian narancia and thence arancia through French orange or orenge, although the Spanish route from naranja to French is not to be ruled out). These are the famous, usually silver, but sometimes bronze or copper brooches, ranging from the small buckle-type (vitssõlg), through the ±5-cm almost-closed-horseshoe-shaped fastener (rõngasõlg, reminiscent of Viking-era brooches, although some of these might more aptly be called a Prees) and heart-shaped brooch (südamekujuline sõlg) to the >15‑cm (or up to 35 cm in the Setu area) circular, gently-conical boss (kuhiksõlg) worn by Estonian women on the breast of their traditional dress. In addition to decoration, they also served as security for food purchases in the spring of lean years. Renamed (1968-1990) during the manifestly communist period as Karl Marxi.