Cannels - anybody know why?

[Cheshirechappie]

We all know about in-cannel and out-cannel gouges, but why the word 'cannel'? Wossit mean, and why is it used for gouges?

My Concise Oxford dictionary isn't very helpful; the entry for 'cannel' describes it as a bituminous type of coal which burns with a bright flame. Interesting, but can't see any connection to gouges.

Merriam Webster is a little more helpful, having three entries; the aforesaid coal for one, an obsolete name for cinnamon (nope - I can't see the relevance to gouges, either) - and, rather more interestingly, an obsolete name for a gutter in a road. Ah - maybe now, we're getting somewhere.

It's not too much of a stretch to see the similarity with words like 'channel', which I suppose the inside curved bit of a gouge does resemble, and it's also not much of a stretch to think that the word may go back to the early days of gouge-making, when older words which have since passed out of common use were everyday parlance.

Anybody know of any other current uses of the word 'cannel', or is it pretty much unique to woodworking tools these days?

 

[Blockplane]

I had always assumed it was a variant on channel.

If you look at a cinnamon stick and the way it flakes, there is a slight resemblence to a gouge, so there may be a connection.

As for the gutter running down the middle of the drang, I have always known it as a kennel.

Regional pronouciation, spelling not standardised until , what - 150 years ago?
All variations on a theme, I suspect.

 

[Jacob]

What happens on the fringes of the woodwork community is that people pipe up claiming to "know" something which others are a bit vague about. It tends to be accepted by default and gradually becomes canonical. "Cannel" could have been somebody's misspelling or misinterpretation of something heard, but now we are stuck with it, because it's useful.
In fact there is also masses of total bollorx talked which isn't useful at all and should be forcefully rejected!
No doubt the same thing goes on in other communities. Be vigilant, be sceptical!

 

[Andy Kev.]

My guess is that it simply came from one of the Germanic languages (we sometimes forget that English is a Germanic language and Anglo-Saxon was even more so) and it's worth noting the modern German word "Kanal" for channel in all the senses that channel is used in English as well as for things like ducts etc. So I suspect it is just an older word for channel.

 

[Jacob]

Just recalled that years ago I worked on building sites and picked up two words (amongst many others :roll: ) which I saw as "pudlit" and "bodger". Turned out that these are better known as "putlog" and "podger"! Nobody told me!

 

[MikeG.]

Anybody else other than me not heard the word before?

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Here you go, Mike;

http://www.henrytaylortools.co.uk/wwchisel.html

 

[PAC1]

Nope
Gouges have been in cannel and out cannel for centuries.

 

[rxh]

French words:
canneler = to flute (i.e. to make a fluted shape like on a column)
cannelure = flute, fluting (as on furniture or a column)

 

[Bm101]

French words:
canneler = to flute (i.e. to make a fluted shape like on a column)
cannelure = flute, fluting (as on furniture or a column)

Or Latin if we want to go back even further it would seem.
I had an English teacher when I was about 12 and every week he would make us learn Latin roots. Simple stuff compared to any who have been to a proper school or who actually learned Latin of course. But I'd shake him by the hand for it now much as I thought it was pointless at the time.
Dog Latin or not, it exponentially increased my understanding of my own language and has continued to do so ever since. I owe the man a pint for that.
I know you like a Roman artefact or two rxh. I had the pleasure of a couple of nervous swipes with your lovely Goodmanham plane once.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/channel
Quote:
"Etymology 1
From Middle English chanel (also as canel, cannel, kanel), a borrowing from Old French chanel, canel, from Latin canālis (“groove; canal; channel”). Doublet of canal."

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

:wink:

 

[ED65]

Interesting ponder CC. I too have always subconsciously assumed that cannel was a variant on channel or both being from the same root word (although unrelated roots to words that became homophones are quite common in English).

Now thinking about it however this isn't as obvious a given, because of what the cannel is describing. It's not the gutter-like channel along the main body of the gouge, which of course both types share; grind the business end of either kind of gouge and they can be indistinguishable. So the cannel really refers just to the bevel (bezel, basil), or its position, which is a much less obvious association.

Why weren't they in-bezel and out-bezel gouges? It would seem far more obvious really.

For anyone who isn't into guns, the tantalisingly similar word cannelure is in English. In a firearms context it can be used for the groove(s) around the circumference of some types of ammunition, either the projectile or the casing. But the dictionary definition of the word for general English usage is much as rxh gave for it in French, a groove running lengthwise on the surface of a cylinder or column. Which brings up another oddity of usage from the same context, the long grooves sometimes seen on gun barrels are never referred to as cannelures as far as I'm aware, but IME are invariably called fluting. So how words get assigned to things, even within a fairly narrowly confined context, can be very arbitrary.

 

[ED65]

What happens on the fringes of the woodwork community is that people pipe up claiming to "know" something which others are a bit vague about.

You mean like the saw nib? (hammer)

 

[Jacob]

I know what the nib is for!
Or rather - I found a valuable use for it, which suggests that that was its original purpose, even if Disston had forgotten why.

 

[Trafalgar]

Cannelle is the French word for cinnamon, FWIW.

 

[Tasky]

http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/cannel

 

[AndyT]

http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/cannel

Ah, so for the canny Scots at least, cannel was a synonym for bevel/basil/bezel. Thanks Tasky.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Wow - thanks chaps!

Thus, the word 'cannel' may come from a regional dialect, middle English, old French, old Germanic, Scots or Latin - or each of the aforesaid may have borrowed from those previous. I suppose blaming the Romans is as safe a bet as any (until someone comes up with a Greek word or Egyptian hieroglyph, that is).

I suppose the 'in-cannel' and 'out-cannel' terms could either refer to the bevel, bezel or basil being in the cannel or outside the cannel leaving it intact right to the cutting edge. Or it could be - if the Scots are to be believed - the bevel, bezel or basil itself.

Wherever the word 'cannel' comes from in the context of woodworking gouges, it's bloomin' old!

 

[Andy Kev.]

I'll have to withdraw my speculation as to the possible Germanic roots of the word; Bm101's bit of etymology having firmly put it in the Latinate camp ... but now I'm starting to wonder what the Anglo-Saxons would have called it!

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I'll have to withdraw my speculation as to the possible Germanic roots of the word; Bm101's bit of etymology having firmly put it in the Latinate camp ... but now I'm starting to wonder what the Anglo-Saxons would have called it!

Well Google translates into Swedish (a cousin of Saxon, as I've come to realise from watching subtitled Scandi-noir on telly):

Edge = Fasa (face?)
Bevel = Kant (cant?) cant is not so far from cannel either!

So in/out-faced or in/out-canted maybe?

PS my pet theory as to why Scots refer to southerners as "sassenachs" is that is because these people spoke a Saxon language or "Sachsenisch" - seems like I'm not the only one: http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forum ... o-the-war/

Cheers, W2S

 

[Andy Kev.]

I've managed to come up with this: læfelcant.

It's a combination of the word læfel which means bowl or spoon or indeed anything which is sort of scooped out and is clearly related to the modern German Löffel which is a spoon. If we then combine that with your "cant" we get the above which looks far more satisfyingly English than the possibly Norman (cough, spit) "cannel".

It fits quite naturally into the language. Try saying it in a phrase e.g. "Can yer chuck us ' læfelcant, lad?" (Where ' = the missing "the", there being no "the" in OE, something which survives in the north to this day).