[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: qIvon

[nIqolay Q]

{qIvon} is a bit of show-gibberish from DS9 that was retconned into a real
word. Dax is trying to prove to Kor that she's Kor's old pal Curzon Dax,
and she tells him "your left QiVon aches every time your ship hits warp
eight." According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia (or, at least, according to
what Memory Alpha <http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/QiVon> says is
according to the Star Trek Encyclopedia), this is supposed to be the
Klingon word for "knee", which would just be {qIv}.

I wonder if there's some way to reconcile the two definitions -- the
intended Star-Trek-writer's-room definition of "knee" and the Maltz
definition of "unspecified body part". (We don't really need to reconcile
them, I suppose, but it's always nice when the show canon and the language
canon get along.) Perhaps it's a structure associated with the knee somehow
that has no analogue in human anatomy. Etymologically, it looks like a
contraction of {qIv von} "it entraps the knee" -- maybe it's some kind of
tissue that surrounds the knee. Or perhaps it's just a dialect word for
"knee", but Maltz was embarassed to talk about it because it's from a
politically-disfavored dialect, or there's some crude pun associated with
the term he didn't want to share.

I am, of course, speculating wildly.


On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 11:00 AM, Klingon Word of the Day <kwotd at wizage.net>
wrote:

> Klingon Word of the Day for Wednesday, September 12, 2018
>
> Klingon word: qIvon
> Part of speech: noun
> Definition: an unspecified body part
> Source: KGT (224 KE, 236 EK)
>
>
> This Klingon Word of the Day is brought to you by qurgh (qurgh at kli.org).
>
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