"Encyclopædia" in Low German = "Nokieksel"?

[pne]

So says the Wikipedia article on the subject.

The amusing etymology: "Nokieksel" for a dictionary or encyclopædia comes not only from "nokieken" (to look up, to look in, to search for X in Y)—so "something with which to look things up" with the instrumentel -sel—but also from the spelling "Nokixel", which is the German word "Lexikon" backwards.

Comments

[jdm314.livejournal.com]

Neat. I suppose nokieken is equivalent to Yiddish nakhkukn.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I imagine so.

The Yiddish appears almost certainly to be a cognate of High German nachgucken; I'm not sure, though, whether High German gucken (with initial /k/, usually, despite the spelling!) and Low German kieken are cognate. As far as I know, they mean the same thing, though.

[jdm314.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I honestly had never heard the High German equivalent. Is it stigmatized?

nachgucken

[pne.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that, no.

gucken is informal, though; the formal equivalent of nachgucken is probably nachschauen or nachsehen. (I'd consider nachschauen to be a bit more south-Germany-ish, but I'd say they're both High German and both acceptable.)