not seeing/hearing the obvious

[darkoshi]

While reading someone's profile, I realized for possibly the first time that the German word for a sweater, "Pullover", is based on the English words "pull over". I may not have ever thought about the word in that way before. It was just a German word to me, sort of like "palaver" is a just an English word if you don't know its etymology.

I'm also not sure I've heard it used as a word like that in English before (which helps explain why I didn't make the connection), even though wiktionary lists it as English.

.

Updated to add:
I just remembered this too: Germans often use a short form of the word, Pulli.

Comments

[darkoshi]

Interesting! The Wiktionary page lists it for Italian, I know it's used in German, and now French. So I wonder how widespread the word is in other languages, and what popularized it. I'd have thought many languages would have their own more entrenched words for "a warm shirt". Surely it can't have been such a novelty to have a knit shirt that is put on by pulling it over the head? (Or maybe it was!)

Here's a good thread about jumpers, pullovers, sweaters, jerseys and guernsey/ganseys (that term is new to me):
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/27568/whats-the-difference-between-a-jumper-a-pullover-and-a-sweater