{"id":525,"date":"2018-11-07T17:19:36","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T17:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=525"},"modified":"2018-11-07T20:28:03","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T20:28:03","slug":"double-trouble-treble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2018\/11\/07\/double-trouble-treble\/","title":{"rendered":"Double trouble treble"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ll get in trouble if you drink a tripel, the strong pale ale brewed by the most hipster of monks, the Trappists.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Lowlands are the Hoxton of Europe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tripels have three times the strength (around 8-10% percent ABV) of the standard table beer historically consumed by the monks themselves. This enkel<\/em> or \u2018single\u2019 beer was traditionally not available outside the cloisters, while the duppel<\/em> (a double strength dark brown beer made with caramelized beet sugar) was sold to provide income for the monastery. Although the term enkel<\/em> is no longer in common beer parlance (it is on the cusp of a comeback), duppel<\/em> and tripel<\/em> have held their ground. It is generally thought that the tripel takes its name from its threefold strength, but it is also sometimes claimed that it is because it has three times the malt of a regular brew. A quadrupel<\/em> is VERY strong.<\/p>\n

As we have seen already in this blog when counting sheep in Slovenian<\/a> and yams in Ngkolumbu<\/a>, means for the expression of quantities and multiplication are often linguistically fascinating. Not least the doublet treble <\/em>and triple<\/em>, which originate from the same etymological source.<\/p>\n

The Latin word triplus<\/em> \u2018threefold, triple\u2019 first entered English via Old French treble. <\/em>Not satisfied with claiming the space previously occupied by the Old English\u00a0adjective \u00ferifeald<\/em> \u2018threefold\u2019, it turned up again by the 15th<\/sup> century as the adjective triple<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This triad of modifiers (threefold, treble and triple) exemplify some of the pathways by which lexical synonymy can come about. The first word was formed through a compounding processes (i.e. the numeral three<\/em> forming a new word with the multiplicative form \u2013fold<\/em>), the second entered the language through direct borrowing, and the third through a second wave of borrowing (either from Old French triple<\/em> or Latin triplu<\/em>s).<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t just find words competing to express the same meaning, but also parts of words. The \u2013fold<\/em> element of threefold<\/em>, tenfold<\/em> and manifold<\/em>, and the \u2013plus<\/em> of triplus<\/em>, are argued to have developed from the same Proto Indo-European root *pel \u2018to fold\u2019. To complicate things even further, the now obsolete treblefold<\/em> was attested between the 14th<\/sup> and 16th<\/sup> centuries. Words, it seems, like to fight for the same space, and can sometimes be incestuous.<\/p>\n

Since entering English over 500 years ago, triple<\/em> and treble<\/em> have staked out different paths, but retained similar meanings in at least some of their manifestations, as explored by Catherine Soanes on the OxfordWords<\/a> blog. In terms of frequency, triple<\/em> is the stronger twin (or is it a triplet? quadruplet?), ending up triumphant with around 6 times more occurrences in the Oxford English Corpus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But treble<\/em> has some resilience. Although the official Scrabble board has double and triple word scores, treble word scores<\/em> are occasionally referred to on the net (albeit erroneously, or in a devil-may-care way), such as in Charlie Brooker\u2019s article on how to cheat at scrabble<\/a>. I even found a \u2018threefold word score\u2019 on a Scrabble knock-off site. Lawyers to the ready!<\/p>\n

This demonstrates that these adjectives really are semantically interchangeable for the most part, even though their distributions are not identical.<\/p>\n

The take home? While not not every monastery sells the same tripel, they will all get you drunk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ll get in trouble if you drink a tripel, the strong pale ale brewed by the most hipster of monks, the Trappists. Tripels have three times the strength (around 8-10% percent ABV) of the standard table beer historically consumed by the monks themselves. This enkel or \u2018single\u2019 beer was traditionally not available outside the cloisters, while the duppel (a double strength dark brown beer made with caramelized beet sugar) was sold to provide income for the monastery. Although the term…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,4,74,75,73],"tags":[],"coauthors":[57],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borrowing","category-english","category-latin","category-lexicon","category-old-french"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":548,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}