WW #6: Brrrr

It’s a pleasant -21C (-6F) outside as I write this, so let’s talk temperature words! This is apparently an area I’ve completely neglected so far, so all of these are brand new words (or new senses of existing words).

Muipidan has tihitïde [ˈti.hiˌtɨ.də] “cold”, ndatado [ˈⁿda.ta.do] “warm”, and k’etade [kʼe.ta.də] “hot”. The difference between ndatado and k’etade is really one of attitude rather than degree; ndatado usually implies “pleasantly warm” while k’etade implies “unpleasantly hot”. K’etade is also sometimes used to mean “painfully cold”, as when describing a cold winter night in the northern forest.

In Kharulian, temperature words are stative verbs. They distinguish raghyam [raˈʝam] “to be warm to the touch” (literally “burn”) from fadur [ɸaˈdur] “to feel warm”. Similarly, ryikh [ɹ̠ʲiç] “to be cool to the touch” contrasts with uírnyil [uˈiɹ̠ʲ.nʲiɫ] “to feel cool” (originally a compound meaning “to be exposed to the wind”).

Nitherian also has stative verbs for temperature words. It makes a simple two-way contrast between mweso [ˈmwe.so] “to be cold” and vimo [ˈvi.mo] “to be hot”. The suffix -pya, used for forward movement, tends to instead mean “become” when attached to a stative verb, so “heat up” is mwevya [ˈmwe.vja] and “cool down” is vmpya [ˈvm̩.pja].