… was the name for an irregular ingot of copper in the Dutch East Indies, and indeed in modern Dutch means “lump”, so I learnt today from one of the numismatic lists to which I belong. (And yes the subject line did get my attention.)
It reminded me of the Thai word for pumpkin, fook, pronounced as though the middle letters were “u” and “c”.
And in Thai, the word for water buffalo differs from the word for penis only in the tone; I once spent a very annoying day in a central Thai village being followed around by the original peasant dirty old man trying to get me to name in animal, in the hope I’d get it wrong.
It’s nice to know I’ve learnt so many useful things in my travels.
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