The village of Noyers in Burgundy is full of half-timbered houses, called « maisons à pans de bois » or « maisons à colombages » in French. The first name just refers to "pieces of wood" — that's what such a house is built with. The second expression, à colombages, is more complex linguistically.
I've always wondered where the term « colombage » came from, but I had never looked it up. I just read that the word « colombe », which it's derived from, has nothing to do with the homonym word « colombe » that means "dove" in French. Colombe in this sense is an archaic rendering of the classical Latin word « columna », meaning "column." That's « colonne » in modern French. So the colombages are wooden "columns."
Another "framed" photo of the streets and houses of Noyers-sur-Serein in Burgundy
Okay, maybe that's too esoteric. Also esoteric are my struggles with the Blogger interface when it comes to posting large photos. If you look at the first photo(s) in this post, you'll see a black horizontal line separating the two halves of the large image of a Noyers house. I wish I could get rid of that line, but I can't. I want to post the photo at a very large size, but Blogger also imposes limits on image size. So the the best I can do is cut the image in half and post it as two images. It's interesting, because when I look at the photo in the Blogger authoring tool, that horizontal black line is not there...
Je me demande s'il existe un colombier à colombages à Colombes.
ReplyDeleteNot too esoteric for me. I'm glad to learn the correct etymology.
ReplyDeleteI'd always assumed that colombages had something to do with the Latin columba even though I couldn't understand the connection--maybe people kept pigeons upstairs? Now I'll think of columns instead of pigeons.
That black line is parallel to the bottom of the photo, but it doesn't look it. I had to check.
Not too esoteric pour moi, non plus :)
ReplyDeleteSorry about your blogger problems -- I just started using blogger (I occasionally blog about architecture styles--- Sears houses, and other kit homes and plan-book homes in the U.S.), and I don't know how you do some of the things you manage to do. Do you write html code sometimes, like to get your words next to your photos?
Great houses in this town!
I don't do any real HTML coding -- I gave that up ten years ago when I started using Blogger -- but I do make minor changes to Blogger's code when I am putting posts together.
DeleteAnother little escapade into french life, this morning! I love it! Merci, Ken.
ReplyDeleteMary in Oregon
Ken, do you happen to know the century of that first house (the one in two pieces of photo) ?
ReplyDeleteI don't know for sure, but probably 15th century.
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