Sookaskede (Sookased [pl.])

Sing.: sookask aka karune kask (hairy birch), sokikask (although this reads like ‘sock’ birch, Wiedemann gives it as a genitive of sokk:soki ‘juice’, i.e. the sap that locals drink [see Mähe], I mean, the buggers don’t just stop at hugging trees…), sookõiv (marsh birch), suukõiv (‘mouth’ birch, but poss. a dialect form of soo), downy, white, European white or hairy birch, Betula pubescens, presumably the one that younger Estonians use to flagellate themselves in the sauna.

Sookailu (Sookail)

Labrador tea or wild rosemary, lit. marsh march tea, Rhododendron tomentosum (syn. [i.e. formerly] Ledum palustre), a traditional folk remedy for coughs. Street planned but never built.

• Deadname

Soodi (Soot)

Oxbow lake, body of stagnant water, arm of a river separated from the main channel, old, dried-up river bed. Named for the former rivers that were part of what used to be the Mustjõe delta emptying into Kopli laht (bay). For “used to be”, see Liiva and Paljassaare. Word probably derived from Soo. Soot:soodi is also the nautical term for the strange-sounding Eng. for ‘rope’, i.e. sheet, or line used to control the sail. Originally from Old Eng. sceatline where the first part comes from sceata, the lower part of the sail, and clearly derived from Old Eng. sciete, scete, etc., length of cloth, giving us also bed-‘sheet’, and the second part gradually fading from use and memory. See Köismäe.

• HAABERSTI
• Mustjõe
• Geography
• Natural World
• Waterway