Re: [Polat_Kaya] Words under
the lens: English word "KNUCKLEHEAD".
Dear Gangchen Gonpo or Ganggon,
Hi! Thank you for your response regarding my paper on "knucklehead" being
from Turkish "çok
dangalak" meaning "very stupid".
My response to your e-mail is below and citings from your letter are in
red.
1. You said:
"With all due respect, knucklehead is not a disguised ancient Turkish word, unless someone did it during World War II."
Polat Kaya: I do not deny that the word
"knucklehead" is a term used in the English language. I was
explaining how this word was made up. There are many words of the English
language that have been made up from Turkish words and phrases. I have
been writing about this for quite some time. The term
"knucklehead" is not an exception. Whenever it was made up
(anagrammatized) does not matter. The important thing is that it has been
made up from a Turkish saying and in my paper I explained how it
was done.
Also, when you say that "knucklehead
is not a disguised ancient Turkish word," will you please explain how
you came to this very strong pronouncement? Surely you must have a
rationale for your judgment. I would appreciate it if you would share
that rationale with us. Obviously you know English but do you know
Turkish? Do you know that there are endless numbers of words belonging to
the so-called "Indo-European" (IE) languages that have been
anagrammatized from Turkish words and phrases?
2. You said:
"What brings the HDAS to mind is that "knucklehead," meaning a stupid or slow-witted person, is classic US slang dating back to the period of World War II. Apparently "knucklehead" arose as a variant of "bonehead," meaning that a stupid person has a thick skull impervious to listening or learning."
Polat Kaya: What this is saying here is
that "all stupid" persons have "thick skull bones", and
that is why they cannot comprehend what people are telling them. This is
a baseless explanation and "etymology". Did it ever occur to you that
people use their "ears" to listen to what is being told to them?
People do not listen with their skull bones. Their inability to
understand what is being said can be due to so many different physical and
psychological conditions - but definitely not the thickness or thinness
of their skull bones! So your explanation again is far from being
satisfactory. It is a diversion and sophistication.
As for your saying "There's some evidence that
"knucklehead" was originally military slang" again does not prove
anything. In Turkish the use of "DANGALAK" meaning
"stupid" is a general term that people use irrespective of being
civil or military. It is a word that comes to present day at least from
the times of the Ottoman empire. In other words, it has a long history in
Turkish.
3. You also said:
(The word "knuckle," meaning the end of a bone at a joint, itself comes from a Germanic root meaning "little bone.") There's some evidence that "knucklehead" was originally military slang."
Polat Kaya: This implies that "knucklehead" is related
to the word "knuckle" which is said to come from the Germanic source "knöckel".
The make up of the Germanic source word for "knuckle" itself is
suspicious though. The Collins German Concise Dictionary (German -
English and "English - German), 1993, p. 250, defines "knöckel" as
meaning "finger knuckle", that is, a "finger
bone" - which it is.
Now let us analyze this German word "knöckel".
When we look at this word in two parts such as "knöck
+ el", we have the following situation:
The word "EL" is
the Turkish word "EL" meaning "hand".
The word "knöck" is
nothing but the anagrammatized form of the Turkish word "KEMIK" meaning
"bone". So, the German word "knöckel" is
also a made-up word - anagrammatized from the Turkish expression "EL
KEMIKI" (kemik + el) meaning "hand
bones". Indeed the fingers and finger
bones and the knuckles are the bones of the "hand", that
is, EL in
Turkish. Neither
you nor any other linguist can deny this fact!
The English word "knuckle" is
just another variation of the German word "knöckel", thus
the English "knuckle" is also
made up from Turkish "EL KEMIKI".
You can see it inside "knuckle" if you look carefully.
The letter N in "knöckel" or
in "knuckle" is
the Turkish letter "M" encrypted (changed) into letter "N"
by means of the so-called "Caesar Ciphering", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_cipher.
This is one of the encryption (camouflaging) tricks that has been widely used
in manufacturing endless numbers of Indo-European words from Turkish words and
expressions. Using this trick obliterates the original form and identity
of the Turkish source material in the newly manufactured IE word. However
I must point out that the original Turkish source text is still present in the
newly manufactured IE word - although in a confused form.
In other words, the original source text is not lost - meaning that it can be
recovered - if one knows what to do. I have given countless numbers of IE
word examples in my Polat Kaya Library.
Thus your referencing a Germanic word as a source for the English word "knuckle" does
not help your argument either because both are manufactured from Turkish -
contrary to all kinds of deceptive verbology! These 2 examples (i.e.,
English "knuckle" and German "knöckel") are, of course, in
addition to the original "knucklehead" that
I said was from Turkish "çok dangalak" in
my paper.
Additionally, in German there is the term "Holzkopf" meaning "blockhead",
that is, "wooden
head" and not "bonehead".
The German word "knöckel" does
not seem to be used for referring to a "knucklehead".
However, I will point out that the word "kopf",
meaning "head",
is nothing but an anagrammatized form of the Turkish word "kafa" meaning "head".
You can see now how solid my argument is about the makeup of the IE languages.
4. Furthermore, the Oxford American Dictionaries define the word
"knuckle" with another meaning as follows:
"PHRASES: knuckle under the hostages agreed that
they would not knuckle under surrender, submit, capitulate, give in/up, yield,
give way, succumb, back down, admit defeat, lay down one's arms, throw in the
towel, climb down, quit, raise the white flag."
The Oxford American Dictionary somehow connects the meanings of "surrender,
submit, capitulate, give in/up, yield, give way, succumb, back down, admit
defeat, etc., " with
the finger bone "knuckle". Now, I ask you and all other
linguists, to please tell me, how can anyone come up with a word that means all
of these meanings with just the "finger bones"?
I will tell you, though, how they could have come up with these double meanings
for this word: Actually the word "knöckel" is
the combination of two different Turkish words (expressions):
One is the Turkish expression "EL KEMIK" as I mentioned above.
The second is as follows:
The word "KNUCKLE" or "KNÖCKEL",
rearranged letter-by-letter as "CUKLEN-K" or "CUKELN-K"is
the anagrammatized form of the Turkish word "ÇÖKÜLEN" meaning "it
is that which buckles under pressure, it gives way, it submits, it surrenders,
it bends under pressure". Now that makes perfect sense as
the basis for the English and Germanic word "knuckle" meaning
"to surrender, bend, twist, curve, distort,
contort, deform; bulge, arc, arch; crumple, collapse, give way".
So, in order for "knöckel" or "knuckle" to
have these different meanings, the manufacturer of the word must have combined these
two different Turkish sources into one word. Evidently these secret
operators knew Turkish very well. They were definitely not knuckleheads.
To conclude, I say that your comments are a nice try of sophistry, but, of
course, they cannot be accepted as an explanation for the term "KNUCKLEHEAD" as it
is based on totally wrong information. My explanation of "knucklehead" being
made up from Turkish "ÇOK DANGALAK" is
logical, rational and powerful.
I do thank you for writing and sharing your views though.
By the way, it seems I received another letter from you once before - but under
a different name, even though the e-mail user-ID was the same. Because of the
change in your name, it was not easy to recognize you. The point I am
trying to make here is that altering names and words are very effective ways of
obliterating history and the identity of people.
Best wishes to you and to all,
Polat Kaya
18/04.2010
Gangchen Gonpo wrote: