FLAT
Wild Word Friday!
Last week we received a letter in the mail from our 7-year-old granddaughter, Rylee. When I opened the letter, I was surprised to find “FLAT Stanley” inside. According to the information our granddaughter sent, Flat Stanley loves to go on adventures, and so he decided to take a little trip to our house, via the U.S. Postal Service. FLAT Stanley has had a few adventures at our house, including a romp in the snow and a trip over the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, but I thought he also might like to take an adventure into cyberspace via my blog to learn a bit about his first name – FLAT.
So, FLAT Stanley, did you know that FLAT is one of the oldest words in the English language? It’s so old that it began thousands of years ago as a part of the Indo-European language, which is the mother of many languages in Europe and Asia. In that language people said, plat in stead of FLAT. From the Indo-European language, plat took a trip over hundreds of years to the Germanic languages and became flataz. A few hundred years later, flataz went north to the Scandinavian countries and was pronounced as flatr. From those counties the word came to England, where at first it was flet and now is FLAT, and that is how we say the word in the United States, too.
What do you think of that, FLAT Stanley?
FLAT Stanley says he’s glad to know that his name has been in so many places and said in so many different ways, but he thinks FLAT is the best way of all to say his name, and that he’s glad to be FLAT. That means he can fit back into an envelope and get mailed on many more adventures!
Happy traveling, FLAT Stanley!
Have any of you had FLAT Stanley come to visit at your house or school?
Blessings!
Sue
(Some information in this blog post from the Online Etymology Dictionary and from A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in The Principal Indo-European Languages by Carl Darling Buck.)
In 2004 our youngest was in 7th grade and the middle school participated in a Flat Stanley event.
His Flat Stanley traveled from Michigan to Indiana to California where my aunt sent him to a school teacher friend of hers in Phuket, Thailand.
I wonder if Flat Stanley will make the trip to auction barns with us today? I’d love to meet him What an awesome way to teach kids about our world. I hope he visits my house someday, too!
What a fun day, Patti! I wish I would have brought Flat Stanley!!
Wow! That has to be a record for most distance traveled by Flat Stanley, Kristin!
I first met “Flat Stanley” many years ago in a classroom in NJ. What an original idea that author had!
Fun word history, Sue. 🙂
Thank you, Patti!