Although demijohn is a good name for a washroom containing no bathtub or sink, it actually refers to a wine bottle or vinegar jug whose body is fitted with a wicker-work casing. Demijohn, in fact, has nothing to do with the name John, but instead is an English corruption of the French dame-jeanne, a name that literally means Lady Jane. The French may have jokingly bestowed the name dame-jeanne on such vessels because their long-necked, wide-bodied shape resembled an overweight dowager, a resemblance heightened by the wicker casing covering the body of the bottle like a skirt. Dame-jeanne, which emerged in French in the seventeenth century, made its way into English by the mid eighteenth century but was not converted to the more English sounding demijohn until the early nineteenth century. The word was also adopted by numerous other languages, including Italian (damigianna), Spanish (dama-juana), and even Arabic (damajanah).<\/p>\n
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Although demijohn is a good name for a washroom containing no bathtub or sink, it actually refers to a wine bottle or vinegar jug whose body is fitted with a wicker-work casing. Demijohn, in fact, has nothing to do with the name John, but instead is an English corruption of the French dame-jeanne, a name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d"],"yoast_head":"\n