CANOE
Wild Word Friday!
It’s difficult to find anything more exciting, in a quiet gentle way, than paddling down a slow river in a CANOE. I’m sure many people would rather have their excitement come to them in a more dramatic fashion, but a slow CANOE ride is just my style.
A Voyaguer’s CANOE in a not-so-slow CANOE ride!
The word CANOE comes to English via Spanish and to the Spanish language from the Arawakan language. The Arawakan people were from the Caribbean and, according to Christopher Columbus’s journal, they traveled by canoa, a dugout boat hollowed from the trunk of a silk-cotton tree. The canoa was “all in one piece, and wonderfully made,” Columbus wrote. As other European explorers pushed on into North Ameica, the word CANOE was used to designate many Native boats, including the birchbark CANOEs made by Native peoples from my home state of Michigan.
Do you CANOE? Or do you appreciate other forms of recreation a bit more?
Blessings!
Sue
(Some information in this post is from The Chronology of Words and Phrases, A Thousand Years in the History of the English Language by Linda and Roger Flavell. Photograph from Wikipedia.)
Hi Sue, I always wanted to try out canoe & few years ago I did with friend. Oh dear !what an experience that was my friend ended up tipping me out when she got out & I go soaked my sneakers were full of water. Decided to go into aerobic’s class to get dry & ended up winning basket of goodies & three minutes fame on TV. Havent been in canoe since but at the time I did enjoy it.